Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

MESSAGES FROM THE QUEEN

INCOME TAX

The VICE-CHAMBERLAIN OF THE HOUSEHOLD reported Her Majesty's Answer to the Address, as follows:

I have received your address praying that the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Netherlands Antilles) Order 1970 may be made in the form of a draft laid before your House.

I will comply with your request.

ST. VINCENT (GIFT OF A PARLIAMENTARY LIBRARY)

The VICE-CHAMBERLAIN OF THE HOUSEHOLD reported Her Majesty's Answer to the Address, as follows:

I have received your Address praying that I will give directions for the presentation on behalf of your House of a gift of a Parliamentary Library to the House of Assembly of St. Vincent, and assuring me that you will make good the expenses attending the same.

It gave me the greatest pleasure to learn that your House desires to make such a presentation and I will gladly give directions for carrying your proposal into effect.

MAURITIUS (GIFT OF A MACE)

The VICE-CHAMBERLAIN OF THE HOUSEHOLD reported Her Majesty's Answer to the Address, as follows:

I have received your Address praying that I will give directions for the presentation on behalf of your House of a gift of a Mace to the Legislative Assembly of Mauritius, and assuring

me that you will make good the expenses attending the same.

It gave me the greatest pleasure to learn that your House desires to make such a presentation and I will gladly give directions for carrying your proposal into effect.

Oral Answers to Questions — EMPLOYMENT

Industrial Arbitrators

Mr. Ashley: asked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make a statement on the Government's future use of individual industrial arbitrators.

The Minister of State, Department of Employment (Mr. Paul Bryan): Before I answer this Question, may I, on behalf of my right hon. Friend, apologise for the fact that he is unable to attend Question time today, for reasons which I think the House will recognise? He will be here to make a statement later in the afternoon.
The Answer to Question No. 1 is as follows: There has been no change in the Government's policy towards this form of arbitration.

Mr. Ashley: Now that the Government have destroyed confidence in arbitration in the public sector, may I ask the Minister to recommend the appointment of a man acceptable to both sides to inquire into the electricity dispute?

Mr. Bryan: I could not accept the implication of that supplementary question. The statement which my right hon. Friend made last night and his interview with the trade union leaders will, I hope, convince them that arbitration is still available and is still fair. As to the second part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary, about an individual arbitrator, I suggest that he addresses that question to my right hon. Friend when he attends later this afternoon.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Would my hon. Friend agree that the lesson of experience suggests that any arbitrator, if he wishes to stay in business, is bound, in effect, to split the difference between the last offer


of the employers and what the employees are demanding because if he does not do that he will not be acceptable to the union side again? Is it not evident, therefore, that the sole purpose of arbitration is to provide an alibi to both sides for an inflationary increase?

Mr. Bryan: That may or may not be so, but the Government's role in arbitration is to be fair and to be outside the actual negotiations; and that is the role which we shall follow.

Mrs. Castle: While it is most unusual for the Secretary of State not to be present for Questions, even in the present situation, may I inform the hon. Gentleman that if his absence means that he is at last engaged in genuine conciliation, we shall be the first to excuse him?

Mr. Bryan: I can assure the House that my right hon. Friend is continuing his admirable conduct in this most difficult strike, as he has been doing in the last few days.

Unemployment

Mr. Ashley: asked the Secretary of State for Employment what specific steps he is taking to reduce the level of unemployment.

The Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Dudley Smith): All the facilities of my Department's services are available to those needing fresh employment, including special arrangements whereby redundant workers can be given employment information in advance of their discharge. The additional training measures announced on 4th November will also help.—[Vol. 805, c. 383–4.]

Mr. Ashley: What steps are being taken to inform employers and workers in development and intermediate areas about the new scheme to retrain men over 45?

Mr. Smith: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has raised this point because it is important. We are issuing a special Press notice in the areas concerned and our local officers are being instructed to send individual notifications to all employers who are likely to be of help. Leaflets will also be prepared. We intend to press this vigorously to ensure

that as many people as possible know about the scheme.

Mr. Crouch: Is my hon. Friend satisfied that the services of his Department are sufficient to deal with the permanent pocket of unemployment in the South-East Region—namely, the Kent coast and, in particular, North-East Kent?

Mr. Smith: I am well aware of the problem on the Kent coast. I visited the area this week and the representations which were made to me will lead to further consultations within my Department. I am satisfied that we can do a great deal, though the general question of curing unemployment is tied up with economic prosperity.

Mr. Bob Brown: Will not the Minister agree that the recent regrettable decision on I.D.Cs. will exacerbate the already desperate position in the North-East of England?

Mr. Smith: No, Sir. I would not accept that suggestion. In fact, the hon. Gentleman may find that it turns out better than he anticipates but, as he knows, this is not a question for me.

Mr. Scott: Is my hon. Friend satisfied that the information about available vacancies is sufficiently widely based? Should we not be looking at the way information is spread around the country so that the unemployed are conscious of opportunities on a national basis?

Mr. Smith: My hon. Friend has a very good point there. The more sophisticated our means of transmitting information about vacancies, the more chance there is of getting a successful response, but this is tied up with the question of mobility and we are looking at this very carefully at the moment.

Mr. Hardy: asked the Secretary of State for Employment what are the present rates of male unemployment in the Yorkshire coalfield intermediate area and in the development areas of England.

Mr. Dudley Smith: At 9th November, 1970, the percentage rates of unemployment in the Yorkshire coalfield intermediate area and in the English development areas were 5·5 and 5·9, respectively.

Mr. Hardy: In the light of that answer, will not the hon. Gentleman consider


again raising the Yorkshire coalfield area to development area status? The situation revealed by the figures gives us considerable discouragement in South Yorkshire, and I must ask the Minister to accept that there is urgent need for such reconsideration.

Mr. Dudley Smith: As the hon. Gentleman probably knows, the question of development areas is not for me. No one can be complacent about the figures, and we believe that our proposals for retraining for people over 45 may well help quite a number of miners. I have seen for myself the way in which many miners have responded successfully to retraining opportunities.

Safety Training in Industry

Mr. Harold Walker: asked the Secretary of State for Employment what steps he is taking to expand and improve safety training in industry.

Mr. Dudley Smith: I am again drawing to the attention of all industrial training boards that safety should be an important element in all job training.

Mr. Harold Walker: I welcome the fact that the hon. Gentleman is pursuing the initiative I took when I was holding his job, but is this good enough in view of the worsening accident rate and the fact that industrial accidents account for the loss of more days of production than do strikes?

Mr. Dudley Smith: I always think it erroneous to seek to compare the number of strikes with the number of days lost as a result of accidents, because the two are not comparable. I know from what I have seen that the hon. Gentleman is very interested in this matter and did a great deal about it while in the Department. I do not think that we can be complacent and more efforts must be made, but it is significant that the Robens Committee is looking into the adequacy of safety training at all levels and, again, I think that this will help.

Industrial Relations Bill

Mr. Moyle: asked the Secretary of State for Employment when he now intends to publish his Industrial Relations Bill.

Mr. David Mitchell: asked the Secretary of State for Employment when he will publish his Industrial Relations Bill.

Mr. Bryan: The Industrial Relations Bill was published on 3rd December.

Mr. Moyle: As the Government are taking the opportunity to go ahead with this Bill, will the Minister of State tell the House and the country what impact he expects it to have after it becomes law on the incidence of strikes and the rate of inflation?

Mr. Bryan: The Government expect the Bill to have a very considerable impact. We do not claim that it will have an immediate impact or that it is a shortcut solution to our problems, which clearly do not have any short-cut solutions. But we think that as time goes on its influence will certainly be very great and will bring order to a disordered scene.

Mr. Mitchell: Is my hon. Friend aware of the very wide support there is in the country for these proposals, including not only the general public but many trade unionists? Will he confirm that he will be ready to give careful consideration to Amendments of detail during the Committee stage?

Mr. Bryan: As to the second part of my hon. Friend's supplementary question, there will be plenty of opportunity, since the Bill is to be debated on the Floor of the House, for every hon. Member to have a share of the debate and to influence the Bill. This was not an offer which the Opposition seemed to accept with any alacrity or enthusiasm. As to the weight of support in the country for the Bill, it is getting more and more clear that that support is widespread.

Mr. Heffer: Is not the hon. Gentleman clearly wrong in saying that the Opposition did not want the Committee stage to be taken on the Floor of the House? Both my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) and I, in the debate on the Consultative Document, demanded that the Bill should be dealt with on the Floor of the House, and we are delighted that the Government have seen the sense of the view then expressed.
As to the Bill itself, as similar legislation exists in the United States of


America—which is not as arbitrary as the Measure proposed by the Government—and as that legislation does not deal with the real problems of industrial relations, would not the Government think again, even at this late hour, and withdraw the Bill?

Mr. Bryan: It was very hard to analyse the emotions of the Opposition when the announcement was made about the Committee stage being on the Floor of the House. From this side of the House, members of the Opposition merely looked dumbfounded for several minutes on end.
We do not accept that our Bill is similar to American legislation, but we have made use of experience of countries all over the world and adapted it to the British scene.

Screen Process Printing (Training Courses)

Mr. Moyle: asked the Secretary of State for Employment how many courses of training are available for silk screening in South-East London; and how many applicants there are for such courses.

Mr. Bryan: Training in screen process printing is normally provided by the industry with the help of the London College of Printing. There are also two courses with 24 training places at the Waddon Government Training Centre. On 16th November there was a waiting list of 88 applicants for these classes.

Mr. Moyle: Does not the number of places available in the Government training centre and the waiting list there is for them indicate that many people are having to wait a long time for training courses in this subject? Will the Minister look into the position and see whether he can expedite the availability of places?

Mr. Bryan: The provision of more places is being considered now. The position earlier in the year was that those trained were not being taken into industry very quickly and there appeared to be few opportunities for them. For that reason, more places were not needed, but in view of the bigger demand the position is being reconsidered.

College for Blind Persons (Manchester)

Mr. Kaufman: asked the Secretary of State for Employment whether he will

consult with the Royal National Institute for the Blind with regard to the establishment in Manchester of a rehabilitation and retraining college for blind people wishing to be placed in employment.

Mr. Dudley Smith: No, Sir. Present demand would not justify such a college.

Mr. Kaufman: Does not the Under-Secretary of State agree that it is a considerable ordeal for blind people in the north of England to go so far from their homes as London, which is the only place to which they can go for courses of training to rehabilitate them and make them fit for occupations which will normalise their lives? Would he not accept that a college such as this could be a centre for the entire north of England and make a great contribution to helping blind people there to be retrained for jobs which would help them to live normal family lives?

Mr. Dudley Smith: I am always very sympathetic to blind people in their extreme difficulties, but I am advised that there is no justification for such a college and, that there is plenty of provision in the country for the rehabilitation and retraining of blind people. There are two centres, one at Torquay and one at Ceres in Fifeshire, and a number of people from the hon. Member's own region are at both of them, and some on the waiting list. But if the situation gets worse I am always prepared to consider the matter further.

Mr. Marten: On the rather wider question, can my hon. Friend say what progress is being made in the reduction of the level of unemployment amongst the registered disabled?

Mr. Dudley Smith: As I said the last time I answered Oral Questions, my right hon. Friend has asked me to look at this matter especially. We are pursuing it very vigorously, and I hope in due course, probably some time in the new year, that I shall be able to announce something to my hon. Friend.

Mr. Alfred Morris: Whilst I appreciate the reply previously given to me by the hon. Gentleman, can he now say what action is being taken under Section 18 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, 1970, which has to do with the


training of those who are responsible for placing disabled people in work?

Mr. Dudley Smith: That is rather wide of the original Question, and I should require notice of it, but I shall be very happy to talk to the hon. Gentleman about it.

Mr. Kaufman: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the Minister's reply, Mr. Speaker, I beg to give notice that I shall seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment at the earliest possible opportunity.

Wages and Salaries (Automatic Adjustment)

Mr. Adam Butler: asked the Secretary of State for Employment whether he will consider legislation to provide an automatic national adjustment to wages and salaries, related to changes in the cost of living index.

Mr. Bryan: No, Sir. I do not think that it would he appropriate to impose such a requirement on negotiators by legislation.

Mr. Butler: But would not an adjustment of this kind remove one of the principal justifications for wage demands at present? It would not be inflationary. If my hon. Friend will reconsider the question, will he think in terms of a flat-rate payment and not a percentage based on earnings?

Mr. Bryan: I follow my hon. Friend's argument, but the cost of living is only one factor influencing negotiations. Productivity, comparability, differentials, the position of the lower-paid worker—all these factors cannot simply be banished from negotiations.

Mr. Atkinson: Does the Minister accept that the cost of living has increased by 7 per cent. over the past 12 months, and that for an average family of man, wife and one child, earning the average wage today, a further 4 per cent. is needed to cover the increased cost of tax and insurance contributions, so that the combined total of 11 per cent. means that the minimum wage increase today for such an average family on an average wage must be 11 per cent. to enable them to stand still and maintain their living standards from one year to the next.

Mr. Bryan: I should have to confirm the figures, which I do not carry in my head, but what I can say is that the Government have shown a bigger concern for lower-paid workers than have any previous Government.

Industrial Disputes

Mr. Adam Butler: asked the Secretary of State for Employment how many working days have been lost due to strikes taking place in opposition to or in protest against the Government's proposed industrial relations legislation.

Mr. Hayhoe: asked the Secretary of State for Employment what estimate he has made of the numbers involved in the unofficial stoppage on 8th December in protest against the Government's proposals on industrial relations.

Mr. Skinner: asked the Secretary of State for Employment how many different industrial establishments were affected by the 8th December demonstration against the Industrial Relations Bill.

Mr. Bryan: It is impossible to make a close assessment, but my Department estimates that some 350,000 employees may have taken part in the one-day stoppage on Tuesday. Information on the number of establishments affected is not available.

Mr. Butler: I am sure that the majority of right hon. and hon. Members will join in condemning the Communist-directed political strike on 8th December, but, in view of the questions and views expressed in the Lobby on Tuesday, may I draw my hon. Friend's attention to the need for even greater publicity to explain what the proposals in the new Bill are?

Mr. Bryan: I do not know exactly what my hon. Friend means by the expressions in the Lobby, but all sections of opinion had better get used to the idea that we intend to press on with industrial relations legislation. The House cannot tolerate attempts to dictate by industrial action what it should do. I hope that those concerned will quickly realise the futility of further industrial action.

Mr. Hayhoe: Does my hon. Friend agree that our parliamentary democratic system is just as much under attack by


those who seek to use industrial action to censor the contents of newspapers as it is by those who foment strikes in order to frustrate the will of the House?

Mr. Bryan: I think that all right hon. and hon. Members will agree with what has been said.

Mr. Orme: No, they do not.

Mr. Bryan: I was about to add that, to be fair, I think that that expression of view had been put from both Front Benches.

Mr. Skinner: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it was probably more criminal for some doctors to refuse to sign medical certificates last May than it was for some workers to take part in a peaceful demonstration against a reprehensible Bill?

Mr. Bryan: Both actions were misguided.

Mr. Hayhoe: asked the Secretary of State for Employment how many strikes have occurred since 1st July, 1969; and in how many the Trades Union Congress has intervened in accordance with its agreement with the previous Government of June last year.

Mr. Bryan: It is provisionally estimated that 5,118 stoppages of work due to industrial disputes began in the period 1st July, 1969, to 31st October, 1970. The General Council's report to this year's T.U.C. records that over 180 disputes were reported to the T.U.C. in the 12 months ending June, 1970, and I understand that a further 27 disputes have been reported to the T.U.C. since June.

Mr. Hayhoe: I welcome the efforts which the T.U.C. and Mr. Victor Feather, in particular, have made in seeking settlement of some of these disputes, but do not the figures show beyond a shadow of doubt how wrong the previous Government were in June last year to climb down and run to ground beneath the skirts of the T.U.C.—a somewhat indecorous position in which, so far as I can see, right hon. and hon. Members opposite still are?

Mr. Bryan: I think that the answer to the second part of my hon. Friend's question is, "Yes, Sir". At the same time, having said that, I acknowledge that

the T.U.C. has tried in good faith to do its best to carry out the Croydon undertaking of June, 1969. Obviously, we welcome its efforts, especially in inter-union disputes. However, the very figures on this question show that the task is beyond what the effort of an organisation of that sort can achieve.

Mr. James Hamilton: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that in the United States, where a system is operated similar to that under the Bill now before the House, there are three times more strikes than we have in this country? Second, does he agree that the T.U.C., on the basis of the White Paper introduced by the previous Government, has now accepted responsibility, which it did not previously take, and will he acknowledge that the T.U.C. is the appropriate body to deal with its own members, not the Government of the country?

Mr. Bryan: As I have said already, I do not accept that we are introducing so-called American legislation. We are introducing legislation tailor-made for this country. As for the second part of the hon. Gentleman's question, I can only repeat that the size of the problem—we are now running up to 4,000 strikes per year—must call for stronger measures than can be supplied by the Trades Union Congress.

Mrs. Castle: Is not the Minister of State aware—of course he is—that two-thirds of the strikes are over in three days or less, and, therefore, intervention by anybody is impossible? Second, is his sudden and rather belated tribute to work of the T.U.C. not connected with the fact that the Government are at this moment deeply thankful for the intervention of the T.U.C. in the power dispute, and that they are pinning their hopes to the thought that Mr. Victor Feather will be successful in breaking the deadlock which they have created? Is it not a fact that, following the agreement with the Labour Government, Mr. Feather and the T.U.C. have done more conciliation in a matter of hours than the Government have done in six months?

Mr. Bryan: The fact remains that there has been a greater escalation of strikes during this period than ever before. We cannot get away from that.
As to the first part of the right hon. Lady's question, I take it that she has been reading the Guardian, which, I must explain, is entirely in error. My right hon. Friend, in his task of trying to do his best to move towards a settlement, will welcome help from the Trades Union Congress or anyone else who is willing to help effectively.

Mr. David Mitchell: asked the Secretary of State for Employment how many strikes have occurred between 1st July, 1969 and 31st October, 1970; and by how much this figure exceeds that for the previous 16 months.

Mr. Bryan: The number of stoppages of work due to industrial disputes which began in the period 1st July, 1969 to 31st October, 1970 is provisionally estimated at 5,118. This exceeds the figure for the previous 16 months by 1,589.

Mr. Mitchell: In view of those very serious figures, may I ask my hon. Friend whether his right hon. Friend has made any estimate yet of when the legislation he is introducing will reach the Statute Book and be able to start its vital work?

Mr. Bryan: As my right hon. Friend has said before, we expect to get the legislation through Parliament by the end of this Session. We shall certainly do everything we can to do so.

Mr. John Fraser: Would the hon. Gentleman carry out some research among the employers concerned in those 5,000-odd strikes asking them how many would have sued the unions or organisers of the strikes for damages, and would he secondly say in respect of how many strikes the Government would have applied for an injunction under their proposed legislation to restrain the strike from taking place for 60 days?

Mr. Bryan: The answer to the question, I would estimate, is "Very few." We do not expect a flood of litigation to follow our Bill. We do expect that the standards it lays down will be effective in producing the sort of atmosphere which will lead to more order, better procedures and better industrial relations.

British Leyland (Longbridge Works)

Mr. Carter: asked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make an

official visit to the Longbridge works of British Leyland.

Mr. Dudley Smith: My right hon. Friend has no plans at present but I certainly hope that such a visit may be possible some time in the future.

Mr. Carter: Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that that was a most disappointing reply, as 5,000 British Leyland car workers have been made redundant in the past few days? As that is the result of the Government's economic policy, will the hon. Gentleman urge his right hon. Friend to lift restrictions on the car industry in order to avoid further redundancies?

Mr. Dudley Smith: I do not accept for a moment that it is the result of the Government's economic policy. A result of the Government's economic policy will be that many further jobs will be saved which would probably have been lost under the last Administration. These redundancies, regrettable as they are, have to be made, in the light of commercial considerations, by the companies concerned.

Mr. David Mitchell: Is my hon. Friend aware that since this great British motorcar combine was formed, it has had only three weeks without an industrial dispute in its organisation?

Hon. Members: So what?

Mr. Dudley Smith: Yes, and we can all draw various conclusions from that fact.

Scotland

Mr. MacArthur: asked the Secretary of State for Employment what was the total net decline in employment in Scotland between April, 1966 and June, 1970.

Mr. Dudley Smith: Provisional estimates show a decrease between March, 1966, and March, 1970, of 82,000 employees in employment in Scotland. There are no estimates for April, 1966, and estimates for June, 1970, are not yet available.

Mr. MacArthur: Does my hon. Friend recall that the Labour Government promised in their period an increase of 60,000 jobs in Scotland? Is he aware that, because of the shameful loss of 82,000 jobs in the same period, the gulf


between promise and performance in Scotland amounted to 142,000 jobs?

Mr. Dudley Smith: Yes, Sir. We are well aware of this in the development areas—and others besides Scotland are concerned—there has been a general decrease in the numbers in employment. The previous Government's efforts failed, and we have to tackle and cure the situation. It will probably take some time, but we are confident of the outcome.

Mr. William Hamilton: Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that this net loss of jobs was the result of the very quick decline of the basic industries? Would he give the figures to show the number of jobs in the pipeline in June, 1970? What response have industrialists made to the Government's proposals to accept the Hunt Committee recommendation to reduce I.D.Cs. from 5,000 to 10,000? Is not this causing great concern among the industrialists in Scotland?

Mr. Dudley Smith: The hon. Gentle man is right to say that a large proportion is due to the decline in traditional industries. I entirely grant him that. However, it is an undoubted fact that the policies of the last Government to try to stimulate extra activity in Scotland failed. The hon. Gentleman's question about I.D.Cs. is not for me and should be addressed to my right hon. Friend. We are not complacent about the figure and we intend to try to improve the situation.

Occupational Qualifications

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: asked the Secretary of State for Employment if it is his intention in his proposed legislation to make it illegal for employers and trade unions to agree that all persons engaged in an occupation shall be required to have an agreed qualification of experience or skill.

Mr. Bryan: No, Sir.

Mr. Jenkins: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that such a policy would be ridiculous and disastrous? Is he aware that in all areas of employment it would result in a decline of skill? Is he aware that in some areas it would be positively dangerous? Is he aware that the whole

standard of British performance, with its considerable contribution to the balance of payments, rests upon these agreements between employers and employees?

Mr. Bryan: I think that the hon. Gentleman misunderstands the Bill. There will be nothing in the Bill to prevent unions from making agreements with employers about conditions of entry into certain trades or employment, provided that the agreement does not make union membership or union approval a prerequisite of employment.

Mr. Rose: As union membership must be a prerequisite to keeping up standards, would the hon. Gentleman at least match his unfairness and irresponsibility by some consistency and apply the same rules to the Bar Council, the Law Society, and the British Medical Association?

Mr. Bryan: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's view that it must be a prerequisite to preserving standards. However, this will no doubt be discussed when we reach the Bill. I do not think that the analogy is fair.

Mr. McBride: We are talking of the closed shop. Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that the closed shop has been of inestimable value to the country in maintaining high standards of skill and qualifications? Is he not abrogating to the employer the sole right to be the labour recruiting agent?

Mr. Bryan: I acknowledge that the closed shop has had its advantages for industry, but what we are doing in the Bill is to include the fundamental right of the individual employee to freedom of choice. The Government's proposals on agency shop agreements strike a fair and reasonable balance between an individual's right not to join a union and his social responsibility to contribute towards union negotiations from which he will benefit.

Mr. Gorst: Will my hon. Friend make it clear that the Bill will spell out in absolute detail that strikes with purely and solely political objectives will be unlawful?

Mr. Bryan: That is something we can debate during the course of discussing the Bill.

Sir G. de Freitas: On a point of order In view of the totally unsatisfactory nature of the hon. Gentleman's reply to the supplementary question about professional trade union qualifications, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Private Employment Agencies

Mr. Lipton: asked the Secretary of State for Employment to what extent he estimates that the growth of private employment agencies has reduced the number of vacancies notified by employers to public employment exchanges.

Mr. Dudley Smith: Such evidence as we have suggests that the number of vacancies notified to employment exchanges is not significantly affected by the operation of agencies except in regard to commercial and clerical vacancies, particularly in London.

Mr. Lipton: Is the Minister aware of the ever-increasing extent, particularly in London and particularly with secretarial and clerical vacancies, to which private employment agencies are creaming off the vacancies from local employment exchanges, to the very great profit of the former, thus leaving Government employment exchanges with an ever-increasing proportion of unemployables and dropouts?

Mr. Dudley Smith: There is nothing to stop both employers and employees from coming to us to get staff or jobs and to get the assistance free. We are trying to develop this side of our commercial service and doing so successfully to some extent. When the resources are available, we hope to develop it further. I am aware that there is a problem, but I am not persuaded that legislation is the best way in which to deal with it.

Shop Stewards (Training)

Mr. Kinsey: asked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will introduce legislation to ensure training of shop stewards.

Mr. Bryan: No, Sir, but I agree that increased training for shop stewards is of great importance and I am awaiting the

report of the Commission on Industrial Relations on this subject.

Mr. Kinsey: I am pleased to hear that the hon. Gentleman has it in mind. Will he help when training is being undertaken locally? I draw to his attention the Brookly Technical College in Birmingham where the T.U.C. regional advisory committee has already run one of these courses and where another course is in being. It would be extremely useful if the Minister would give every assistance to such courses.

Mr. Bryan: In studying this matter I have been impressed by the wide range of training available. While this is the responsibility of the trade unions and is regarded as such, the training boards have certain responsibility in this connection and many do their best to help.

Mr. Ashton: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that if he introduces his Industrial Relations Bill, nobody will volunteer to be a shop steward? Is he aware that anybody who volunteers to be a shop steward will be virtually putting his head in a noose and that what will ensue will be chaos on the factory floor, because nobody will accept leadership?

Mr. Bryan: The hon. Gentleman will no longer be able to say that the Bill will have no effect.

Ex-Coal Miners (Training and Rehabilitation)

Mr. Eadie: asked the Secretary of State for Employment what new proposals he has to assist coalminers aged over 50 years who have been made redundant or had to leave the industry through ill-health.

Mr. Dudley Smith: Ex-miners are among those who will benefit from the new scheme of training grants starting next month which is designed to encourage employers in the development and intermediate areas to take on and train older men. Industrial rehabilitation units can do much to help those who have to change their jobs because of ill-health.

Mr. Eadie: While thanking the Minister for that reply may I ask him whether he is tackling this human problem in the correct way? Would he not


agree that we are adopting a rather pessimistic approach in suggesting that we are doing a favour to these men who have contributed so much—and that that is wrong? Would he not agree that the right approach is to have these men producing real wealth for the nation, which will give them confidence in any retraining or future policies?

Mr. Dudley Smith: I do not think we are pessimistic about it, but we should be deceiving ourselves if we did not recognise this as a very special problem. It will probably take a long time to solve, particularly in view of the rundown in the coal industry. I genuinely believe that the new provisions for older men will make some impact and I am also pleased that we are able to bring forward some "limited skill" courses in G.T.Cs. All miners can benefit from this if they can be encouraged to take the courses.

Dame Irene Ward: Is there not some good news in the North of England today about a considerable number of jobs reopening for the miners there? Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this has just been issued by the public relations officer of the National Coal Board? If the facts are as stated, does he appreciate that it would be very helpful to us on the North-East coast, since we have suffered tremendously from the closing of so many of our pits? Is my hon. Friend aware that we are grateful for this news?

Mr. Dudley Smith: My hon. Friend is right. The National Coal Board is now recruiting men, including older miners. This will certainly help the situation but we have still to bear the long-term consequences in mind.

Construction Workers (Scotland)

Mr. Eadie: asked the Secretary of State for Employment how many construction workers are currently unemployed in Scotland, in total and by the employment exchange areas concerned.

Mr. Dudley Smith: At 9th November, 1970, there were 20,009 persons registered as unemployed in Scotland who last worked in the construction industry.
As the remainder of the reply consists of a table of figures I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Eadie: While I will look for the answer with a great deal of interest, does the hon. Gentleman not agree that it is a very serious comment on all of us that we should have such a high rate of unemployment among construction workers? Is it not a scandal that we should have to announce such a position when there are thousands of homeless in Scotland who want to know what their housing opportunities are to be?

Mr. Dudley Smith: It may be a scandal, but I would remind the hon. Gentleman that this has developed during the time that his Party was in Government. If we look at the arrangements which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced on 27th October, we can see that this will be a contribution towards easing the problems of the Scottish construction industry.

Mr. Grimond: Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that it is a disturbing fact that there should be spare resources in Scotland, in view of the state of housing? Do I understand that the Government expect the announcements made in October to increase the demand for building workers and the output of houses? Is not the unemployment in this industry due to the squeeze and should not this be looked at?

Mr. Dudley Smith: Yes, Sir. But some of the fiscal changes which were made will contribute towards solving the problem. Again this is not something which will be easily solved, as there has been a general contraction over the years in the Scottish construction industry. At least we are taking positive steps to do something about it.

Mr. Ross: Is it then the Government's policy to increase the number of houses to be built in Scotland? Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this year, for the third year in succession, there will be a record number of houses built and all indications are that the Government's policy will drive that down?

Mr. Dudley Smith: That is an entirely different question and not one for me. The right hon. Gentleman knows from long experience that when the Conservatives are in power housing figures consistently go up.

Following is the information:

TOTAL NUMBERS OF PERSONS REGISTERED AS UNEMPLOYED IN EMPLOYMENT EXCHANGE AREAS IN SCOTLAND AT 9TH NOVEMBER, 1970 WHO LAST WORKED IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

Employment Exchange area
Males
Females
Total


Aberdeen
414
2
416


Airdrie
354
3
357


Alexandria
152
—
152


Alloa
167
—
167


Annan
96
—
96


Anstruther
13
—
13


Arbroath
61
1
62


Ayr
206
1
207


Banchory
7
—
7


Banff
68
—
68


Barrhead
169
—
169


Bathgate
236
—
236


Bellshill
101
1
102


Blairgowrie
36
—
36


Blantyre
92
—
92


Bo'ness
75
—
75


Bridgeton
574
—
574


Bonny bridge
55
—
55


Brechin
18
—
18


Broxburn
64
—
64


Buckie
37
—
37


Burntisland
23
—
23


Cambuslang
44
1
45


Campbeltown
109
1
110


Carluke
21
—
21


Carnoustie
7
1
8


Castle Douglas
26
—
26


Clydebank
458
2
460


Coatbridge
362
9
371


Cowdenbeath
273
1
274


Crieff
30
2
32


Cumbernauld
64
—
64


Cumnock
76
—
76


Cupar
16
—
16


Dalkeith
131
2
133


Dalry
19
—
19


Dingwall
116
1
117


Dumbarton
135
—
135


Dumfries
175
—
175


Dundee
662
4
666


Dunfermline
198
2
200


Dunoon
28
1
29


East Kilbride
93
—
93


Edinburgh
1,278
3
1,281


Elgin
84
2
86


Eyemouth
43
1
44


Falkirk
249
6
255


Forfar
21
—
21


Forres
35
1
36


Fort William
66
—
66


Fraserburgh
37
—
37


Galashiels
49
1
50


Girvan
40
2
42


Glasgow P &amp; C E.O.
30
1
31


Glasgow South Side
973
3
976


Glenrothes
113
1
114


Govan
326
3
329


Grangemouth
57
—
57


Grantown-on-Spey
9
—
9


Greenock
344
9
353


Haddington
59
—
59


Hamilton
298
3
301


Hawick
32
—
32

Employment Exchange area
Males
Females
Total


Helensburgh
65
—
65


Hillington
12
—
12


Huntly
22
—
22


Invergordon
46
2
48


Inverkeithing
36
—
36


Inverness
312
10
322


Inverurie
18
—
18


Irvine
86
—
86


Jedburgh
16
—
16


Johnstone
105
3
108


Keith
26
—
26


Kelso
17
—
17


Kilbirnie
26
1
27


Kilmarnock
214
—
214


Kilsyth
71
—
71


Kilwinning
24
1
25


Kinning Park
161
1
162


Kirkcaldy
200
—
200


Kirkintilloch
97
—
97


Kirkwall
46
—
46


Lanark
53
1
54


Largs
31
—
31


Larkhall
65
—
65


Leith
498
1
499


Lerwick
38
1
39


Lesmahagow
81
—
81


Leven and Methil
164
1
165


Linlithgow
11
—
11


Livingston
76
1
77


Loanhead
101
2
103


Lochgilphead
27
—
27


Lockerbie
13
—
13


Lossiemouth
10
—
10


Maryhill
646
—
646


Montrose
14
—
14


Motherwell
182
1
183


Musselburgh
182
2
184


Nairn
16
—
16


Newmilns
11
—
11


Newton Stewart
32
—
32


Oban
155
1
156


Paisley
359
7
366


Parkhead
1,432
13
1,445


Partick
333
2
335


Peebles
21
—
21


Perth
136
1
137


Peterhead
37
1
38


Pitlochry
17
—
17


Port Glasgow
108
—
108


Portobello
211
—
211


Portree
25
—
25


Renfrew
43
—
43


Rothesay
29
—
29


Rutherglen
208
—
208


St. Andrews
12
—
12


Saltcoats
386
—
386


Sanquhar
23
—
23


Shotts
57
—
57


Springburn
1,211
7
1,218


Stirling
220
1
221


Stonehaven
9
—
9


Stornoway
257
1
258


Stranraer
75
—
75


Thurso
78
3
81


Tranent
71
3
74


Troon
4
—
4


Turriff
12
—
12


Uddingston
84
1
85


West Calder
31
—
31


Wick
167
1
168


Wishaw
185
7
192

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER (OFFICIAL VISITS)

Ql. Mr. Raphael Tuck: asked the Prime Minister if he will make an official visit to Watford.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Edward Heath): I have at present no plans to do so.

Mr. Tuck: That is a pity. Is the Prime Minister aware that I was hoping that after seeing the terrible traffic congestion in the centre of the town he would approach his right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries and ask him to expedite the construction of the North Orbital Extension, which would release this build-up? Does he realise that if something is not done pretty soon Watford will suffer traffic thrombosis and nothing will be able to move? Then he can eat his lunch in front of the Town Hall in the middle of the highway.

The Prime Minister: Planning proposals are being considered by the Secretary of State for the Environment.

Mr. Longden: If my right hon. Friend should decide to visit Watford, will he not neglect to visit the salubrious environs such as Rickmansworth, Radlett, Bushey, Chorley Wood, and Abbots Langley? In each of these places he will receive a warm welcome from my constituents.

The Prime Minister: I appreciate my hon. Friend's invitation.

Mr. Sillars: asked the Prime Minister if he will make an official visit to the Fawley Oil Refinery.

The Prime Minister: There is no Ministerial responsibility for this establishment.

Mr. Sillars: Is the Prime Minister aware that Fawley has made a great contribution towards productivity and that by comparison his Government have made a very poor contribution? Would he not agree that the Government should make an even greater contribution by introducing the same wage formula for working people as has been introduced for generals, in other words, that we have a six-months wage pause followed by a guaranteed 30 per cent. increase in everyone's earnings?

The Prime Minister: Fawley has long been known as having set an example in genuine productivity agreements. I have always urged other firms to follow suit.

Mr. Carter: asked the Prime Minister if he will make an official visit to Northfield, Birmingham.

The Prime Minister: I have at present no plans to do so.

Mr. Carter: Is the Prime Minister aware that that reply will be received with great disappointment in Northfield—

Mr. Faulds: You must be joking!

Mr. Carter: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that what Northfield would have liked to hear from the Prime Minister was a repeat of his statement made in his speech to the people of Birmingham on 4th June, that he does not believe in compulsion in wage negotiations? Had he gone, would he have confirmed that the Government are not preparing to bring in a wage freeze in the New Year?

The Prime Minister: The position remains as I have constantly stated it. If the hon. Gentleman is referring to present negotiations, there is no element of compulsion.

Mrs. Knight: Will my right hon. Friend take note of the fact that it is not only the people of Northfield who will be very disappointed by his reply and that, should he decide to visit Birmingham, if he could find time to come just over the border to my constituency he would be assured of an ecstatic welcome?

The Prime Minister: I will try to remove my hon. Friend's disappointment as soon as possible.

Mr. John D. Grant: asked the Prime Minister if he will pay an official visit to the London Borough of Islington.

The Prime Minister: I have at present no plans to do so.

Mr. Grant: Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Carter), I am deeply grateful to the Prime Minister for his reply, and I expect the


people of Islington to express their gratitude to him in the borough council elections next May. Has the right hon. Gentleman read the Greve Report—if his Ministerial friends have allowed him to see it? If so, is it not time for him to take a more personal interest in the problems of homelessness in the inner London boroughs like Islington? Will he pay attention to this matter?

The Prime Minister: Yes, I will. But it is the direct responsibility of the Secretary of State for the Environment, who, as the hon. Gentleman knows, has been dealing with it.

Oral Answers to Questions — INTERMEDIATE AREAS (DEPARTMENTAL CO-ORDINATION)

Mr. Arthur Davidson: asked the Prime Minister if he is satisfied with the co-ordination between the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of the Environment for policies with regard to intermediate areas; and if he will make a statement.

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Davidson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that while I am not asking him to pay a visit, if he were disposed to visit the intermediate areas of North-East Lancashire it would take him longer to get there than it ought because of bad road communications? Will he give an undertaking today that he will treat as a matter of priority the building of the new M6 motorway link with the Calder Valley?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman cannot expect me to give an order of priority on the road programme in answer to this Question. If he cares to put down a Question to my right hon. Friend he will receive a detailed reply.

Oral Answers to Questions — COSMELEDOS ISLANDS

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Prime Minister if he will pay an official visit to the Cosmeledos Islands in the Indian Ocean.

The Prime Minister: I have no plans to do so.

Mr. Dalyell: Is there any foundation in the suggestion of the normally well-

informed Washington correspondent of The Times that we are thinking less in terms of island bases and more in terms of base at Mombasa?

The Prime Minister: That is quite unrelated to the Question.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: Since my right hon. Friend shows an understandable reluctance to go to the Cosmeledos Islands, would he care to come to Chelmsford instead?

Oral Answers to Questions — DISABLED PERSONS (EMPLOYMENT PROBLEMS)

Mr. Alfred Morris: asked the Prime Minister what representations he has received for the recommendation of the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the employment problems of disabled people; what reply he has sent; and if he will make a statement.

The Prime Minister: Only from the hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Alfred Morris) to whom I replied on 2nd November.

Mr. Morris: While thanking the Prime Minister for the statement he has made to me by letter, may I ask him whether he is aware—I am sure he is—that the incidence of unemployment among the employable disabled, which is now in excess of 11 per cent., is a deeply serious human problem? Is he aware, as I am sure the whole House is aware, that many disabled people want nothing more than the dignity of ceasing to be supplementary pensioners and becoming taxpayers?

The Prime Minister: I agree absolutely with what the hon. Gentleman has said. I have given very careful consideration to the question of establishing a Royal Commission to inquire into this matter, but I find that a great deal of work is being done by the Department itself. We are also expecting the results of the Social Survey of the Handicapped and Disabled in Great Britain organised by the Government. I do not think that anything further would be gained at this stage by setting up a Royal Commission to examine the subject. When we have the results of the Department's work to hand, I hope that we shall be able to do more for the unemployed disabled.

Mr. Ashley: Will the right hon. Gentleman agree that the disgraceful aspect of this problem is that, even with relatively full employment during the previous Administration's term of office, the disabled have suffered from a higher rate of unemployment than other sections of the community? Unemployment among the disabled is five times greater. When unemployment rises this winter, as the Prime Minister knows it will, the disabled will suffer from an even greater rate of unemployment. This is a matter of acute anxiety and urgent action should be taken to deal with it.

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right when he says that the percentage of unemployment among the disabled is much higher than it is among other sections of the population. At the last count it was 11·7 per cent. This is why the Department is doing a great deal of work in studying the particular problems of the unemployed disabled. But if we were to set up a Royal Commission, I do not think that we would gain any more information or advice than we already get from the Adviory Council and from the bodies doing this special work. Therefore, I do not propose at this moment to set up a Royal Commission.

Captain W. Elliot: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that selective employment tax bears on disabled people and that its removal would greatly help their employment prospects?

The Prime Minister: I think that that is perfectly correct.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER'S SPEECH (GUILDHALL)

Mr. Peter Archer: asked the Prime Minister if he will place in the Library of the House a copy of his public speech at the Guildhall on 16th November on Government policies.

The Prime Minister: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave on 8th December to Questions from the hon. Members for Norwood (Mr. John Fraser), Accrington (Mr. Arthur Davidson) and South Ayrshire (Mr. Sillars).

Mr. Archer: I recognise that the Prime Minister acted with great promptitude and decisiveness in this matter, but will he

be even more helpful and say whether he agrees that his assertion that British policy will be determined only by British interests may appear to the rest of the world to be not only self-centred but self-defeating because it will encourage other nations to reciprocate? Since today is Human Rights Day, will the right hon. Gentleman at least undertake that Britain will conform to Security Council resolutions about arms for South Africa?

The Prime Minister: If the hon. Gentleman had gone on reading what I said, he would have realised that I pointed out that this was not to be regarded in any narrow or selfish way. When I was at the United Nations in October, I found that the representatives of other countries were very glad that we should state what we considered to be British interests because they could then formulate their own foreign policies in relation to them.

Mr. Hastings: Does my right hon. Friend know of any other nation which does not pursue its own interests in foreign affairs?

The Prime Minister: Some nations may pursue interests which seem to us to be rather strange, but no doubt they believe that they are their interests.

Mr. Prentice: Is the Prime Minister aware that hon. Members would not need to keep questioning him about his Guildhall speech if from time to time he followed the example of all his predecessors and made a major policy speech in the House, which he seems very reluctant to do?

The Prime Minister: I shall make speeches in the House when I think it appropriate. It has for many years been the privilege of the Prime Minister of the day to speak at the Lord Mayor's Banquet at the Guildhall. I carried on that tradition.

Mr. Barnett: asked the Prime Minister if he will place in the Library of the House of Commons a copy of his public speech at the Guildhall on 16th November on Government policies.

The Prime Minister: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave on 8th December to Questions from the hon. Members for Norwood (Mr. John Fraser), Accrington (Mr. Arthur Davidson), and


South Ayrshire (Mr. Sillars).—[Vol. 808. c. 238–9.]

Mr. Barnett: Should not the Prime Minister issue an explanatory memorandum indicating what his real policy is on wage inflation? Is it not a fact that he proposes simply to allow the policy to develop on the basis of the substantial balance-of-payments surplus inherited from my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins)?

The Prime Minister: The economic policy of the Government as a whole was set out in my Guildhall speech, and it certainly did not consist of the suggestion put forward by the hon. Gentleman, as he knows full well.

Mr. Roy Jenkins: Is it not clear from figures issued recently that the balance-of-payments surplus for the year will be at least £500 million Indeed, The Times talked about £600 million yesterday. Would it not be a simple act of common honesty for the Prime Minister to agree that his June judgment about a deteriorating trend in the balance of payments was, to say the least, mistaken?

The Prime Minister: When the full year's figures are available, I will deal with them.

Mr. Roy Jenkins: Is the right hon. Gentleman denying that there will be a surplus of at least £500 million? Is it not increasingly clear that he will twist and wriggle as much as he can rather than allow any doubt to be cast on his own infallibility?

The Prime Minister: I told the right hon. Gentleman that when the figures are available I will deal with them.

Mr. Marten: Does my right hon. Friend recall that in his speech at the Guildhall he said that the community must be protected from the encroachment of sectional interests? Will he say what the people can do to protect themselves against the sectional interests of the workers in the electricity supply industry?

The Prime Minister: I think that the great mass of the people in this country have made very clear their views about the impact on the life of the community of the present disturbances caused by the electrical workers' union and those associated with it. I do not think that any-

body can be in any doubt about the views of the nation on this matter.

Mr. Orme: Having spelt out what he felt about the wage situation, and the Government having expressed that feeling in their attitude to the electricity workers by not going beyond 10 per cent., how does the Prime Minister explain the increases of over 30 per cent. which he announced on Tuesday for higher civil servants, generals and chairmen of nationalised industries? How does he expect ordinary people to accept that?

The Prime Minister: If the hon. Gentleman considers the matter for a moment, he will recognise that this was the last and concluding stage of what had been happening over the past four years. It was put in hand by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition when he was Prime Minister, and we accepted the recommendations for the chairmen of nationalised industries and higher civil servants and fixed a date for the implementation of the last stage. There followed from that, as is bound to be the case, the judges and the higher serving officers. I thought that the House welcomed, as did the Leader of the Opposition, their offer to postpone the date when the increase would become effective until 1st July next.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Oral Answers to Questions — DEPARTMENT FOR TRADE AND INDUSTRY (MINISTERS)

Mr. Atkinson: asked the Prime Minister if he will take steps to reduce the number of Ministers in the Department for Trade and Industry.

The Prime Minister: No, Sir.

Mr. Atkinson: Is the Prime Minister aware that on 17th November the Minister for Industry stated that the Government had sent a circular to all private employers telling them that they must make only one wage offer and that if that offer is rejected by the workers concerned a second offer must not be made? Does that represent Government policy?

The Prime Minister: I should like to see the document to which the hon. Gentleman referred. In any case, it has nothing whatever to do with the number


of Ministers in the Department for Trade and Industry.

Mr. Maclennan: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what consultations Ministers in the Department for Trade and Industry had with Scottish interests before they decided to alter the rules on industrial development certificates? Their action has been greeted with disapprobation in Scotland and is regarded as very damaging to employment prospects in Scotland.

The Prime Minister: The matter was very carefully considered before the decision was reached. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's view. The change will allow the great majority of these buildings to be built without going through the administrative process, and it will not affect to any appreciable degree the movement of industry to other parts of the country.

MR. SPEAKER (RETIREMENT)

Mr. Speaker: I have a personal statement to make to the House.
Some 18 months ago I indicated to the then Leader of the House and the then Chief Opposition Whip that if I were re-elected to a new Parliament I would hope to remain in the Chair for only a short time in order to see the new Parliament in. When the House did me the honour of re-electing me as Speaker, I again indicated through the usual channels that I would seek to retire some time during the first year of this Parliament. In October I reaffirmed that it was my intention to retire during the Christmas Recess.
It is with deep emotion that I now inform the House that I shall not be returning to the House in the new year. What will probably be my last official duty will be to attend a Conference of Commonwealth Speakers in Delhi in late December and early January.
I have in the past expressed the thanks of the House to those who serve us so well; the Clerks, the Serjeant at Arms and his staff, the Vote Office, the Library, HANSARD, the Press Gallery, the printers, the Refreshment Department, the custodians, the annunciators, the engineers, the cleaners, the police. Today I express my personal thanks to all of them for their utter loyalty to Mr. Speaker, as to the rest of the House.
I would especially thank Mr. Barlas, Second Clerk Assistant, who was my mentor at Question Time when I first embarked on that difficult task; Mr. Gordon, Principal Clerk, who served me at Question Time in the same difficult duty; Mr. Lidderdale, Clerk Assistant, who was my chief adviser when I was Chairman of Ways and Means; and, above all, Sir Barnett Cocks. Rarely have two Officers of the House been more closely associated than have this Speaker and the Clerk. I am fortunate to have had, as the House and my successor will continue to have, the benefit of Sir Barnett's long years of experience, his wisdom and his utter dedication to Parliament. It is roughly true that what wise Rulings I have made have come from his advice and what errors I have made in the Chair have been my own.
I would also acknowledge the faithful personal service of Mr. Green and Mr. Canter, my Trainbearer and his Deputy.
As for my parliamentary colleagues, I cannot express adequately my gratitude to them for awarding me the most precious honour they could give, and for their unswerving loyalty, not so much to me as to the Chair.
Someone writing romantically about Mr. Speaker 50 years ago paraphrased Burke and wrote:
The House has come almost to believe that the Speaker can do no wrong. Certainly, every parliamentary sword would leap from its scabbard to avenge even a look that threatened him with insult.
My experience has not been exactly that—rather that swords have leapt from their scabbards whenever Mr. Speaker has done wrong. I seem to remember that the scabbard of the late Sydney Silverman, a great Parliamentarian, was often empty, and that many a sword has rattled in its sheath when I have failed to please an hon. Member in my most difficult task of choosing who is to speak.
Seriously, I have experienced nothing but kindness and understanding from both sides of the House: from the Leader of the Opposition, to whom I am deeply indebted for appointing me as Chairman of Ways and Means; from the Prime Minister, who has constantly supported me in my office—I am proud to have the friendship of both right hon. Gentlemen; from the present Leader of the House and his predecessor, both of


whom, whilst being good party men, are also good Parliament men, and from the two Chief Whips—all four share with Mr. Speaker a deep love of Parliament and have been my closest companions. We have often disagreed, but never for long.
I owe much to the Services Committee, my constitutional adviser; to its three great Chairmen, the right hon. Members for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) and Workington (Mr. Peart) and now the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd). All these, with the Father of the House and the other elder statesmen of the House, have been my valued advisers and friends.
When I look back on my 20 years in the House, when I remember the great Speakers whom I have had the honour to succeed, when I have realised, as I have done so often, that I have presided over so many able masters of procedure and so many able and devoted Parliamentarians and statesmen, I am at once both grateful and humble.
The greatest of my predecessors said in his valedictory speech:
My hopes will be for the continuance of the Constitution in general and that the freedom, dignity and authority of this House may be perpetual.
The bedrock of this House is allegiance not so much to the individual in the Chair as to the stored wisdom, the procedure, customs and courtesies of which he is the guardian and the exponent. Here is the place where men and women may differ freely, may attack each other politically and fiercely, yet respect each other personally, engage in honourable combat, each believing sincerely in the opinions that he holds but also in the right of the other man to hold diametrically opposite views. For this, Servicemen died across the whole world, Members of Parliament among them. For this the disabled ex-Serviceman gave his health or part of his body. This is a precious House bought at a great price through the ages.
I am for ever grateful to my colleagues for having allowed me to serve it as Speaker, as I am grateful to my constituents for having sent me to Parliament for more than 20 years, and to the Labour Party, which I was proud to belong to until high office made me vacate a lifelong service to one party to serve all

parties and democracy itself. For electing me to the Chair and for its tolerant acceptance of my many errors, I thank the House from the bottom of my heart.

The Prime Minister: Mr. Speaker, I know that I am expressing the feelings of Members on both sides of the House when I say how sad we are to learn of your decision to retire from the Chair. At the same time, the whole House recognises the burden which Mr. Speaker carries, and understands and sympathises with your feeling that after five very arduous years the time has come for you to give up your responsible and onerous office.
Mr. Speaker, suitable Motions to mark your retirement will be moved in the House at a later date. But I would not wish to let this occasion pass without referring briefly to some of the many qualities which you have brought to the Chair. Mr. Speaker should above all be impartial, and be seen to be impartial. None of us, whether in Government or in Opposition, have ever had occasion to doubt this for a moment while you were in the Chair.
Mr. Speaker is the chief custodian of the traditions of the House; you have never hesitated to remind Members of the responsibility which we all share for the dignity and good reputation of the House. Mr. Speaker where possible should preside over the House with charm and good humour. The pages of HANSARD provide ample evidence of your wit and delicate touch, and you have added to this today.
To these traditional qualities, you have added at least one new dimension. Through your extensive travels abroad and generous hospitality at home, you have greatly strengthened the links of this House with Commonwealth and overseas Parliaments. It is indeed appropriate that one of your last acts as Speaker will be to attend the Commonwealth Speakers' Conference in Delhi at the end of this month.
The whole House will be sorry to lose a Speaker who has been unfailingly courteous and helpful to us all—to senior Members, to those elected for the first time, to the officials of the House and to visitors from home and overseas. At the same time, it is good to know that you will now have more leisure to devote


to your many outside activities, to music, to writing, to travelling and to the interests of children, particularly, of course, to handicapped children. We are very sorry indeed to see you go; and you take with you the high regard and warm affection of the House.

Mr. Harold Wilson: Mr. Speaker, the whole House will understand the emotion you must have felt as you addressed the remarks you have just made to the House. It seems only a few weeks ago that the right hon. Gentleman the now Prime Minister and I, the Father of the House, the Leader of the Liberal Party and others were paying tribute to your qualities as Speaker on the occasion of your third election to the House.
As the Prime Minister has said, this is not the moment for us to express in full measure the debt of gratitude owed by the House to you personally for the period of more than five years when you have presided over our proceedings. There will be another occasion. But it is within the knowledge of all of us that you have presided over the work of this Parliament in three successive Parliaments, all very different for a number of reasons. The first when the parliamentary majority was perpetually on a knife edge, the second where one part had a substantial majority, and now the third Parliament when the other party has a substantial majority.
That being so, it must mean that two intakes of new Members of Parliament—two vintage intakes from my observance of them—have known no other Speaker. To them in future—and I know that this is true of those of us who came into the House in 1945 or 1950 or at any other point—it is always the first Speaker of the House of Commons one has known, just as it is the first headmaster of one's school, whom one regards as the quintessential occupant of the Chair. So that by and large for a very large number of Members of Parliament, with a great future and many years ahead of them in this House, you will be particularly remembered by them.
You have also been Speaker at a time when there have been substantial changes in our parliamentary procedures. You have eased those changes and made them workable as a result of your tolerance and your determination to see that pro-

cedures which were a little difficult to assimilate were understood by the whole House over this period. It would not be appropriate to repeat everything that the right hon. Gentleman and I and others said when you were elected Speaker for the third time. As we have been reminded, there will be another occasion. But all of us have felt that during your period of office you have brought to the conduct of the Chair not only the traditional qualities which we knew you had or you would never have been elected in the first place, of fairness, of tolerance and those well-known and off-repeated virtues of selective blindness, deafness and the rest which we know you have applied in good measure; but also because you have extended the function of the Speaker beyond our shores in your visits overseas and by the leadership you have given to many other countries where parliamentary democracy is still far from fully developed.
I conclude by expressing our thanks—and I know that I speak for hon. Members in all parts of the House—not only to you for your conduct of our proceedings during these years, but also to Mrs. King who during these last years has been of inestimable value to you, to all Members of the House, and not least, to the visiting delegations and to other guests of Mr. Speaker in your residence.
I join with the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister in expressing our best wishes to you in your retirement from the conduct of the Chair, and especially in his remarks that you will now have rather more time than you have had to indulge your recognised taste for music, the service you have always given, not least through music, to children and others at Christmas and at other times, and also your great knowledge and power of expression in literature. The good wishes of all of us will go to you as you vacate the Chair, as today we learn with regret is your irrevocable intention.

Mr. Thorpe: Mr. Speaker, the House will have heard with regret but with understanding the decision you have taken. It is hardly necessary to say that you occupy a great position which stretches back to the 14th century. You are, I believe, the 142nd occupant of the Chair. Before the office of Speaker your predecessors were known as Procurators,


and Peter de Montfort in the 13th century presided over what was known as the Mad Parliament which sat at Oxford. [An HON. MEMBER: "Nothing has changed."] We hope that you will not only turn to literature but that you will subsequently publish your memoirs—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, no."]—since this is the corollary of anybody who holds high office in this country. We shall wait with some apprehension to see what description you give to this and other Parliaments over which you have presided.
If the office of Speaker has not carried the dangers which attached to the position in the past, it certainly carries with it the strains and burdens which must make a great physical demand on the occupant of the Chair. You have not had to face the dangers. The worst that can be said is that you have been smoked out of the Chair, but you have shown tolerance, good nature and wisdom. I think it was Lord John Russell who said of Mr. Speaker Shaw-Lefevre that when there was not a precedent he made one but was always careful to add at the end the phrase that his Ruling was given according to the well-known practices of the House.
You have jealously safeguarded the rights of every Member of the House, whether on the Government side, the Opposition or on the minority benches. The hospitality which you and Mrs. King have afforded to many Members of the House and, indeed, to members from visiting Houses of Parliament has made us feel that you are not a remote person but someone to whom hon. Members can go for advice. Your trips abroad have also been mentioned and have played a great part in spreading the message of parliamentary democracy. Therefore, I am sure that it is the wish of the House that we should wish you long life and happiness and that you should take with you the gratitude of us all.

Sir H. Legge-Bourke: Mr. Speaker, as a back-bencher I would not in any way seek to usurp the opportunity which the Leader of the House would normally have to pay to you the tribute of us all, but the announcement which you have

made today came so suddenly that not all of us were prepared for this sad occasion.
May I pay my personal tribute to you, not least because in the last three Parliaments I have had the great privilege of serving on your panel of Temporary Chairmen. I shall never forget your kindness to me while I was engaged on those duties. The team spirit which you inspired into us was a matter which all who experienced it will never forget.
I was particularly grateful to you when, for a fairly short period—luckily from my point of view and that of the House—I was an additional Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means when Mr. Speaker Hylton-Foster was ill. I shall always be grateful for your kindness in seeing me through those weeks.
I should particularly like to place on record my enormous appreciation of what you have done for the benefit of the Commonwealth as well as for this House. It has been a most wonderful experience to meet Speakers from other Commonwealth countries when you have been entertaining them in Mr. Speaker's house. To hear you speak to them, to hear your brilliant remarks, making all of us love Parliament even more, are matters to be highly cherished.
It has been a privilege to serve under you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for what you have done.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS

Mr. Atkinson: On a point of order. I wished to raise a point of order concerning the Prime Minister, but was overtaken by these events. Therefore, I apologise for the delayed action, as it were.
Referring to my Question No. 10 to the Prime Minister, the right hon. Gentleman said that he would like to see the speech to which I was referring made by one of his Ministers making a major statement on policy on behalf of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman then said that my supplementary question had nothing to do with a reduction in the number of Ministers in that particular Department.
I was advised, before putting down that Question, that that was the only way that this matter could be raised because of


the Prime Minister's intervention. If the Prime Minister's remarks are allowed to stand, there is no conceivable way by which back benchers can question the motives or accuracy of statements made by Ministers on behalf of the Government if those statements are made outside the House.
I understand that it is the tradition and privilege of back benchers to put questions to the Prime Minister about major statements on policy made by Ministers. If the only way that we are allowed to do it is by putting down a Question not referring to the speech made by date, nor to the Minister, but only by asking for a reduction in the number of Ministers concerned, it is outrageous and an utter disgrace. If this House allows the Prime Minister to get away with this business of deferring Questions in this way, transferring them, not allowing them, and so on, it is a denial of democracy. Therefore, I should be obliged for a Ruling from you, Mr. Speaker, about the whole business of the Prime Minister answering questions.

Mr. Speaker: The Ruling is quite simple, and I have given it before. The Prime Minister may be asked questions about statements made by senior Ministers—Ministers of Cabinet rank—but Ministers, including the Prime Minister, have the right to answer questions in any way that they wish. This is a point of argument between the Prime Minister and the lion. Gentleman. It is not a point of order.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. William Whitelaw): The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY, 14TH DECEMBER—Second Reading of the Industrial Relations Bill, which will be concluded on Tuesday, 15th December.
At the end on Monday:
Remaining stages of the Air Corporations Bill, the Motion on the West Midlands (Amendment) Order and consideration of a Lords Amendment which it is expected will be received to the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill.
At the end on Tuesday:
Remaining stages of the Civil Aviation (Declaratory Provisions) Bill and of the Local Authorities (Qualification of Members) Bill.
WEDNESDAY, 16TH DECEMBER—SeCOrid Reading of the Land Commission (Dissolution) Bill.
Motions on the Judicial Offices (Salaries) Order and on the Judges' Remuneration (No. 2) Order.
THURSDAY, 17TH DECEMBER—Second Reading of the Atomic Energy Authority Bill.
Motions on the Farm Amalgamation and Farm Structure Schemes.
The House has agreed to adjourn on Friday, 18th December until Tuesday. 12th January, 1971.

Mr. Harold Wilson: First, on today's arrangements, which can profoundly affect the arrangements for next week. Following the initiative of Mr. Victor Feather this morning with the unions concerned in the electricity dispute, I understand that he has already called upon the Secretary of State for Employment and that the right hon. Gentleman is to meet the unions concerned at, I think, 4.30 this afternoon. The House is expecting a statement from the right hon. Gentleman. This was volunteered last night. If I am right about the difficulties in the timetable, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to arrange for us to have the statement by his right hon. Friend immediately after the Business Statement has been dealt with rather than wait, as I think would normally be the situation, until we have had the statement from the Chancellor of the Duchy, who, I think, on grounds of practice, precedence, protocol, and the rest, would speak first? If we can be assured that the Secretary of State for Employment will be able to speak at the scheduled time, that is all right. If not, it will be most unfortunate if the right hon. Gentleman has to intervene in the debate later in the day. So will the Leader of the House accord such flexibility as he can between Ministerial statements to make sure that we may hear from the Secretary of State?
If the right hon. Gentleman has to report what I think he has to report, on what I have heard, the Leader of the House can be assured that we shall not want to


press the notice, which I mentioned last night, for a debate under Standing Order No. 9 if all the activities following Mr. Feather's intervention are going as I understand them to be.
Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman will be aware that, on arms for South Africa, we on this side, since the time when that matter was debated in July, have shown considerable forbearance in not pressing it unduly on the Prime Minister and on the Foreign Secretary, because we are more concerned with getting the right result—namely, no shipments—than making the obvious points which can be made in debate. We would prefer this matter to be deferred if we are to get the right answer. Will the right hon. Gentleman give us an assurance that there will be no decision taken and no statement made in the next recess—we had that promise for the last recess—but only when the House is sitting? This would mean that if the Prime Minister intends to announce a decision, which we hope will be the right decision, at the Singapore Commonwealth Conference, the House will be sitting and it can then be explained to us. But if there is to be any statement when the House is not sitting, may we have an assurance that a statement will be made next week on the Government's decision?

Mr. Whitelaw: On the first point raised by the right hon. Gentleman, may I say that I am grateful to him for putting that proposition to the House, because it enables me to respond in the affirmative. Provided that it is acceptable to you, Mr. Speaker, when the Business is completed, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment will answer the next question.
On the second point, I note what the right hon. Gentleman says. The assurances have been given. Concerning a decision being announced and a statement made to this House, those assurances stand.

Mr. Harold Wilson: On the last point, do I understand that there will, therefore, be no decision announced during the recess? I understood the right hon. Gentleman to mean that the assurance given for the last recess applies for the next recess. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether it will be after the

House comes back or whether we shall have a statement next week?

Mr. Whitelaw: I think that I gave the positive assurance for which I was asked, that when any decision is announced, a statement will be made to this House. I stand by that assurance.

Mr. George Thomas: Is the Leader of the House aware that yesterday in the Welsh Grand Committee the Government sustained an overwhelming defeat—[Interruption.] It is not unimportant in Wales.
Is the Leader of the House aware that the Government's social and economic policy for Wales was completely rejected by a vote of 25 to 10 in the Welsh Grand Committee? Will he therefore ask his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister whether he cares to make a statement next week on Government policy in Wales; and, further, whether his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales, whose policy was rejected, is considering his position.

Mr. Whitelaw: These are essentially matters for the Welsh Grand Committee.

Mr. George Thomas: Oh, no!

Mr. Whitelaw: I think I am wise to say that. It has always seemed to me exceptionally unwise that a Scotsman who represents an English constituency should pronounce on Welsh matters.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Membersrose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The House will have heard that an important statement lies ahead. There is a time limit. I hope, therefore, that hon. Members will restrain their Business questions.

Mr. Bagier: Would the right hon. Gentleman invite the Prime Minister or his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment to make a statement next week about an apparent change of attitude in the practice of meeting back benchers? Is he aware that the Prime Minister and his right hon. Friend have refused to meet a deputation of Labour hon. Members representing Northern constituencies—a group of 29 Northern hon. Members—unless that group includes Conservative back benchers? [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"]


Will the right hon. Gentleman ask the Prime Minister to state clearly whether this is a change of procedure which goes against the basic principles of this House and against past practice?

Mr. Whitelaw: As far as I know, there has certainly been no change of principle or past practice. I understand that it was suggested that the matters concerned might well be discussed by an all-party group. It was suggested that that might be a good idea.

Mr. Ross: Is it the intention of the Secretary of State for Scotland to make a statement to the House about his decisions in respect of the Hunterston inquiry? Will the right hon. Gentleman convey to him our desire that he should tell us about it rather than that we should read about it in the Press?

Mr. Whitelaw: I think I am right in saying that it is not the practice of Ministers to announce planning decisions of this kind to the House. It is perfectly true that it is a very complicated report and a considerable decision. My right hon. Friend has placed copies of the document in the Library, and, naturally, hon. Members will be able to pursue him with Questions later. In the meantime, I believe that he is acting entirely in accordance with precedent in not, on very detailed and complicated matters, making a statement to the House.

Mr. Peart: Returning to the question of the delegation comprised of Northern hon. Members to which my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Bagier) referred, may I press the right hon. Gentleman to consider this matter sympathetically? I am sure that he will agree that one must not be rigid about this sort of thing. It is right that groups of this kind should be seen by Ministers, and I always made a point of meeting Conservative hon. Members when I was a Minister. I trust that the right hon. Gentleman will examine this matter carefully.

Mr. Whitelaw: In response to the right hon. Gentleman, I will, of course, look into the matter and investigate all the circumstances of the various cases. I would only add that I am personally perfectly ready to see hon. Members either together or individually. The only trouble

is that I have so many to see but never enough hours in the day in which to fit them all in quickly.

Mr. Edward Short: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the principle goes a little further than merely suggesting that it would be a good idea for there to be an all-party meeting? In fact, the Secretary of State for the Environment has written a letter in which he refuses to meet this northern group of Labour hon. Members unless they are accompanied by Conservative hon. Members. [Interruption.] Is not this a break with long-standing practice?

Mr. Whitelaw: I would, before saying any more, like to look into the point which the right hon. Gentleman raises.

Mr. Rankin: Reverting to the question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), I understand from the Press that the Secretary of State for Scotland intends to make an initial statement in Glasgow. That may be regarded as a compliment to Glasgow, it being the chief industrial centre of Scotland, but will it prevent the right hon. Gentleman from making a statement in the House at the appropriate time?

Mr. Whitelaw: I think I would be wise to stick to the answer which I gave to the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) and say that it has normally been the practice that planning decisions of a complicated and detailed nature should not be announced in statements to the House. It would be a pity to change that practice.

Mr. Palmer: Returning to the question of Ministers seeing back benchers, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman if it has not always been understood that in this matter, Ministers are deputies for the Crown? Do they not have an absolute obligation to meet hon. Members at any time that is mutually convenient?

Mr. Whitelaw: I will certainly look into the various questions that have been raised on this issue. I have no reason to suppose that there has been any possible change in practice. Ministers of this Government are extremely anxious to meet hon. Members when they are requested to do so.

ELECTRICITY SUPPLY INDUSTRY (DISPUTE)

4.5 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Robert Carr): Before coming to the issues which are the concern of my Department, I should first like to assure the House, in view of what was said yesterday from all sides, that I have this morning confirmed with the Chairman of the Electricity Council that everything which is humanly possible is being done to ensure that advance warning of cuts is given to hospitals and other consumers for whom interruptions of electricity supply produce immediate and critical difficulties. Sir Norman Elliott also informed me that electricity boards are doing everything in their power to warn consumers generally of impending cuts.
The House will recall from my statement yesterday that there are at present two disputes in the electricity supply industry; one affecting industrial workers, which has already resulted in the present work to rule, and the other affecting supervisory and technical staffs, who are threatening to work to rule from Monday next.
As regards the latter, I reported yesterday that I had seen representatives of the Electrical Power Engineers Association and asked them to reconsider their decision to work to rule and the possibility of returning to negotiations. I can now report that following that meeting there have been discussions between the Electricity Council and the Association, and that this possibility is being further explored between them in discussions this afternoon. The House will, I know, join me in hoping that there will be a successful outcome.
In my discussions this morning with Sir Norman Elliott, to which I have referred, I also reviewed with him the situation in relation to both disputes. Following this, I decided to invite the unions representing industrial staff to meet me this afternoon, and I am glad to say that they have accepted this invitation, and I am meeting them as soon as I can leave the House following this statement. At the same time, I have invited the Electricity Council to have a further meeting with me later this evening, following my talks with the unions.
Subsequently Mr. Victor Feather got in touch with me and said that he would like to come and see me and report on the meeting he had had this morning with the unions representing the industrial workers. I have seen Mr. Feather this afternoon, and he reported to me that the four unions concerned had indicated that they would be willing to consider suspending industrial action if negotiations could be resumed and the possibility was not ruled out in principle of improving the current offer.
Mr. Feather then said that he wished to communicate this to the Electricity Council, and I said that I would be happy for him to do so, while stressing, of course, that I could not in any way anticipate what the reaction of the Electricity Council might be.
I ask the House, in view of the important meetings I am about to have, not to press me further this afternoon.

Mrs. Castle: Does not that statement confirm how unwise and ungenerous—
[interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. We must discuss this matter quietly.

Mrs. Castle: —how unwise and ungenerous hon. Gentlemen opposite were earlier this afternoon in jeering, as they indeed jeered, at the value of T.U.C. intervention in industrial disputes—intervention which, in this dispute, has opened up the hope and possibility of a just settlement?
Is it not a fact that following their talks with Mr. Victor Feather this morning the unions concerned have indicated their willingness to resume normal working, if normal-type negotiations can be resumed and if the Government will give an undertaking not to interfere with the outcome of these negotiations? May I now ask the right hon. Gentleman, therefore, for an assurance that the Government will not interfere with the vital negotiations which are about to be resumed?
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the claim of the Electrical Power Engineers' Association traditionally follows that of the manual workers in the industry and that therefore if a just settlement can be obtained for the manual workers we shall avoid any repetition of the disruption which might otherwise take place?

Mr. Carr: "Normal negotiations" are difficult to define. Normal negotiations, according to the procedure agreed in the industry, mean that when negotiations have broken down there should be recourse to arbitration. That was the point that I was investigating yesterday. I regretted, and still regret, that the normal course of negotiations has not been followed, certainly through no fault of either the Electricity Council or of the Government. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman, in his usual sitting posture, talks about last weekend's speeches. I remind him that the decision of the unions was taken three days before the speech to which he refers. I hope that the House will not press me to comment further on the merits of the case now. I saw the unions yesterday, and I saw the employers this morning. I am seeing again this afternoon the unions representing the industrial workers, and I am then seeing again the employers. I believe that that is the right course to take, and that it would be wrong for me to say more at present.

Mr. Tugendhat: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, much as we welcome the progress which has been made and much as we wish him good fortune in the future discussions today, many hon. Members on this side believe that the interests of the economy and social justice demand that the settlement should not be inflationary?

Mr. Carr: The Government have made that repeatedly clear, and I certainly do so again.

Mr. Harold Wilson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the whole House will wish not to provoke discussion too far this afternoon, at a time when, following the initiative of Mr. Feather which was announced yesterday afternoon, there is a real hope that we can get not arbitration, not an industrial court, which both sides discussed yesterday, but a resumption of normal working under certain conditions? The right hon. Gentleman is right, I think, to stress that we should not press him further on that matter.
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware, however, that those of us who have been trying to get a resumption of normal working—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] This is not a matter for joking by hon. Mem-

bers opposite. Those of us who have been concerned with this have had it made absolutely clear to us that trade union leaders who are anxious to get a resumption of normal working on reasonable conditions have found their task made immeasurably more difficult by last weekend's speeches—hon. Members may have heard this stated with authority at lunch time today—including particularly the question of blackmail. It may have been that the unions did not go for arbitration three days before the speeches. It is equally the case that the employers did not go for arbitration, which they had every right to do under the agreement, before those speeches. They did not decide to go to arbitration. Those in the union movement who have been trying this week for a resumption have found that the reference to blackmail made it much more difficult, and the right hon. Gentleman should withdraw it on behalf of his right hon. Friend.
Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the question put by my right hon. Friend? Is it not a fact that in the decision of the unions today, communicated to the right hon. Gentleman by Mr. Feather, one of the conditions for resuming normal working immediately, with all that that means for eliminating hardship, is that the Government should give an assurance that they will allow the negotiations by the Electricity Council, the Boards and others to be unfettered, and that there will be no more pressure by the Government telling them what figure they can offer?

Mr. Carr: I have made it clear before, but I am delighted to make it clear again, that the Council is not under instructions from the Government, that what the Government have said about negotiations has been said strongly and openly and has put less detailed pressure and confines on nationalised industry negotiators than the confines placed on them by the right hon. Gentleman when he was in power. I repeat that they are not under instructions, nor will they be.
As to arbitration, we should make the facts clear. I should have preferred not to go into the detail, but the right hon. Gentleman has pressed this point and therefore I think that the House should have the full facts about arbitration. I think that the right hon. Gentleman said


that the employers had not been prepared to go forward to arbitration.

Mr. Harold Wilson: Mr. Harold Wilson indicated dissent.

Mr. Carr: If I misunderstood the right hon. Gentleman, perhaps he would repeat his question on that point.

Mr. Harold Wilson: I put this question to the right hon. Gentleman last night. I said that some of us were confused about it and asked him to state the position. I asked whether it was not a fact that under the agreement the employers could go to arbitration on their own. I was not clear about that from what the right hon. Gentleman said last night. What I said today was—[Interruption.] Hon. Members opposite had better leave the right hon. Gentleman to get on with this. They are in a big enough mess already with their shouting. What I am putting to the right hon. Gentleman, in response to his request, is what I put to him last night and again today. I understand that the employers did not demand or go for the arbitration which they can do on their own. I asked the right hon. Gentleman about this last night. Will he now give us the facts?

Mr. Carr: I can tell the right hon. Gentleman and the House the full, detailed facts, because I confirmed them this morning with Mr. Roberts of the Electricity Council, who is its negotiator in these matters. I was told that these were the facts: that the Electricity Council made clear in the Joint Council that it wished to follow its procedure and to resort to arbitration. There was then a break in the Joint Council's sittings and therefore the motion was not formally moved. When the Joint Council reassembled, the union members did not return in sufficient number for there to be a quorum, I understand. I may have slightly misled the House last night, and I apologise if I did. The position is not that either side can demand arbitration, but that if it is moved in the Council and a majority is in favour, which normally means if one side votes for it, then if there is a proper, formal meeting of the Council in which that is moved by either side, and if there is a majority of the Council—

Hon. Members: On either side.

Mr. Carr: But there must be a properly constituted meeting of the Council. If those conditions are met, then the arbitration goes forward against the will of the minority and the results are binding. But for that to happen there must be a proper meeting of the Council, and, as I have said, the members did not come back. We know about these things in the House. Therefore, there was not a properly constituted meeting of the Council in which the employers could formally move that motion.

An Hon. Member: What about blackmail?

Mr. Kenneth Lewis: Whilst I do not want to press my right hon. Friend, will he bear in mind that although this go-slow, which has been on for only a few days, is still thoroughly unpopular with the general public. I had a letter this morning—[Interruption.] Any hon. Member can see it—from someone who is affected by the go-slow as a sick person but is prepared to continue to be affected and put up with it in the hope that the Government, or the Electricity Council, will not give in to what might be a thoroughly inflationary settlement.

Mr. Carr: I note what my hon. Friend says, and I note from the expressions of opinion from many members of the public that the views he has expressed are widely and commonly held. I can only repeat that the Government have made abundantly clear their position about the need to reduce the inflationary level of settlements, and that stands.

Mr. Harold Wilson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Last night I gave notice that we might, following the right hon. Gentleman's statement today, want to move the Adjournment of the House in order to debate this matter. However, in view of the activities which have followed this morning's initiatives and meetings, it would be inappropriate for us to do so. Indeed, I think that it would be inappropriate to press the right hon. Gentleman further since he is due in a few minutes' time to meet the trade unions on the manual side of the industry.
Can we have an assurance that there will be a statement tomorrow morning on the progress made this evening and overnight? It is very important that the House


should not go away leaving what could be either a hopeful or a very difficult situation to develop over the weekend. If we can have that assurance, I hope that the House will leave the matter where it is so that the initiatives started this morning can be followed through.

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. William Whitelaw): Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I note what the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition has said about a statement tomorrow. Naturally one will be made. I think that the only possible question I should raise is that it might be difficult to make it at a particular point of time in the negotiations, and if that is the case I am sure that the House will understand. But it will be made at 11 o'clock if at all possible.

EUROPEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Geoffrey Rippon): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and with that of the House, I should like to make a statement on the progress of the negotiations for British membership of the European Communities made at the Ministerial meeting of the conference which I attended in Brussels on 8th December.
At this meeting agreement was reached that the alternatives listed in the Declaration of Intent made by the Community in 1963 would be open to certain African countries, namely Gambia, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. I remind the House that these alternatives comprise association under the Yaounde Convention; other association agreements with mutual rights and obligations, particularly in matters of trade; or commercial agreements to facilitate and expand trade between the Community and these countries.
The Community said that it could only state its position with regard to other Commonwealth developing countries in the Indian Ocean and Pacific, and the Caribbean, for which we proposed that the same options be available, in the light of discussions taking place with

respect to the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement.
The conference also discussed further the basis of Gibraltar's customs arrangements with the Community following the agreement already reached—and reported to the House on the 29th October—that the provisions of the Treaty of Rome would apply to Gibraltar under Article 227 (4). It has been accepted that as Gibraltar is not a part of the United Kingdom's customs territory there would be no reason to include Gibraltar in the customs territory of the enlarged Community.
I again expressed the hope that the Community would shortly be able to make known its views on the arrangements to be made for Hong Kong.
The principles of the United Kingdom admission to the European Investment Bank were agreed.
In the course of a statement I made dealing with the question of transitional measures, I proposed on behalf of Her Majesty's Government a transitional period of five years for adaptation in both the industrial and agricultural fields and for adaptation to the Community's rules regarding capital movements and fiscal harmonisation. I stressed that, in putting this proposal forward, we thought it essential that, within the common period of five years in the four fields, effective provision should be made for arriving at a mutual balance of advantage between the United Kingdom and the existing Community.
In the industrial field, we thought this could be done if we could provide for a suitable accelerated rhythm for tariff rates and adaptations. For agriculture and horticulture, we should require that the adaptations be made with reasonable flexibility over five full years.
I said that the five-year period should not, in our view, apply in the cases of Community finance, New Zealand butter and cheese and sugar from developing Commonwealth countries, nor to the European Coal and Steel Community and Euratom.
The Community noted our proposals upon industry and agriculture with satisfaction and said that they would examine our suggestions on capital movements and fiscal harmonisation in a positive


spirit. Deputies were instructed to pursue the discussion of all these questions in preparation for the next Ministerial meeting.
The Community said that it would establish its position on all of these questions within a global framework. This is naturally our own position. The agreements reached hitherto must all be regarded as provisional pending the outcome of the negotiations as a whole.
At the meeting I also outlined certain considerations which we believe the Community should take into account in dealing with the question of the British contribution to Community finance. I pointed out that the United Kingdom would be likely to enjoy only relatively small receipts as a result of Community expenditure in its present form. I recalled also that the existing members of the Community had had an extended transitional period in which to move to the agreed Community system of financing, and that correctives had been provided for governing member countries' contributions during a period of years after the final stage of Community direct income had been started. I noted that the Commission had stated in its observations on our estimates of the effect of Community financing upon the United Kingdom that, should unacceptable situations arise within the present Community or an enlarged Community, the very survival of the Community would demand that the institutions find equitable solutions.
I said that we would be making detailed proposals in this field as soon as possible.
Finally it was agreed that Ministerial meetings should take place next year on 2nd February, 16th March, 11th May and 22nd June, and that the timetable of meetings could be speeded up if necessary.

Mr. Harold Lever: Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that the House will be disappointed at having so little information about the crucial question of the financial contributions, particularly having regard to the fact that the Commissioners reported and enlarged upon this subject some three weeks ago? When does he expect to be able to give the House this most crucial information?
Is the right hon. and Learned Gentleman also aware that any of our comments or questioning, approving or otherwise, is without prejudice to our right to judge the package as a whole if and when it emerges? With that proviso, will he tell us if he has been able to secure any special treatment for horticulture and hill farms within the agricultural context? Did he consult the N.F.U. before accepting the five-year period? Does that meet with its approval?
I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for the stand he is taking on behalf of the Commonwealth sugar producers and New Zealand. Will he make the other negotiating parties aware of what is not immediately obvious as a point of the highest importance from the political standpoint for historical and other reasons, but which is regarded in this country as a matter of the utmost importance—the protection of New Zealand and Commonwealth sugar interests?

Mr. Rippon: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. I can give him the assurance he asks for in the final question he asked. I do not think that there is any need for dispute on the subject in our proposals in regard to Community finance. As I said, I will be making these as soon as possible. The Community understands the position. Its document was an important one but technically it has not yet been delivered to us. In the last statement I made to the House, I requested the Community to reserve its position until it had heard our detailed case. This is a crucial matter and I am sure that we shall approach it in that light.
I referred specifically to horticulture in my statement. I have been very much concerned about it, as has my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture. We are concerned that there should be full flexibility within the full five years for which I have asked. Of course, particular regard must be paid to horticulture. We have also reserved from the beginning the position of the hill farmers—and I have a personal interest in this. We will be going into that in detail in relation to Community finance and fiscal measures. There is also the question of the contribution we receive from Community funds in relation to matters of that kind. My right hon. Friend has been in close touch with the National


Fanners' Union throughout these negotiations.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on the extremely wise and constructive statement he made on behalf of Her Majesty's Government on Tuesday. But in his contacts with member Governments and the Commission in weeks ahead, would he remind them that we are all engaged in an enterprise of common interest to all the countries of Western Europe and that perhaps a more forthcoming attitude on their part than they seem able to have adopted to date would not come amiss?

Mr. Rippon: I appreciate what ray hon. Friend has said. This is certainly the spirit in which the United Kingdom Government have entered the negotiations. I am bound to say that I have so far found the Community doing reasonably well in the circumstances.

Mr. Peart: The Chancellor of the Duchy has said that the Community noted our proposals for agriculture with satisfaction. In view of the fact that he is reported as saying in Brussels on Tuesday that the Community's farmers would gain extensive new markets, I ask him whether they give any indication at whose expense—our home producers or our traditional suppliers?

Mr. Rippon: There will be a change in agricultural trade, and everybody understands that. The significance of the phrase "the Community noted our proposals with satisfaction" is that they were entirely new proposals. It would not have been wholly unreasonable for the Community Ministers to ask for time to consider them. In fact, they have technically reserved their position. But insofar as they have publicly declared that they received them with satisfaction, that is a useful step forward.
They have also agreed that deputations should at once start considering how we move up the transitional period, because this matter is of great importance to us.

Mr. W. H. K. Baker: My right hon. and learned Friend said in his statement that there is to be a five-year transitional period for agriculture. As under the terms of the E.E.C. policy fishing is covered by the common agricultural guidance and guarantee fund, can he,

firstly, say whether the five-year period for agriculture will cover fishing? Secondly, would he bear in mind that it was a Conservative Government which imposed the 12-mile limit, which was of immense value to our inshore fishermen, and that our inshore fishermen are confident in the hope that the 12-mile limit will be retained; otherwise they will be up the spout?

Mr. Rippon: The details of what happens within the transitional period are a matter for further negotiation. As far as the fisheries are concerned, as I have told the House on several occasions, we have entirely reserved our position on that matter.

Mr. John Mendelson: Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman not accept, given the fact that the mandate to negotiate was given in the last Parliament and when the House last debated the matter there were wide differences of opinion as to the financial contribution, the transitional period, and all the matters he has now reported upon, that in view of the fact that the Werner Committee's proposals are more far-reaching than anything which is subject to current and immediate negotiations, there is now an urgent need for debate? I deliberately put this to the right hon. and learned Gentleman as a political question, and not to the Leader of the House. There is an urgent need for debate so that this Parliament, for the first time, should be able to represent the views of constituents and give their own opinions at a stage when there is a great deal of information available for judgment and not to wait until the very end, when the only thing one can say is "yes" or "no", without any intermediate judgments.

Mr. Rippon: I am sure that there must be a debate at the appropriate time and that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will have taken note of that. In conducting the negotiations, we have all along been proceeding on the basis initiated by the previous Administration.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on his personal success in Brussels. Is he aware that his flexible approach to the Community, making reasonable concessions and at the same time seeking to safeguard essential British interests, will commend


itself to everyone in the House who wants a strong and united Europe?

Mr. Rippon: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. It is important in these negotiations that we bear in mind that we are having discussions and there has not been much question of concessions as such on either side. We have deliberated on these matters and we are trying to reach solutions which preserve the mutual advantage of existing members of the Community and new applicants.

Mr. Jay: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman make clear whether he has now accepted not merely the whole of the Rome Treaty but the whole of the common agricultural policy, the Commission's proposals for the transitional period, but, in addition, has abandoned the claim for a maximum limit on Britain's financial contribution to the Community funds?

Mr. Rippon: None of those questions raises any new issues. We have proceeded on entirely the same basis as the previous Government, which implied accepting the provisions of the Treaty of Rome and the general arrangements which the Community has made. We have abandoned nothing of our negotiating position.

Mr. Clark Hutchison: Will my right hon. and learned Friend now answer the question put to him by the right hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Peart)? If there is more scope for agriculture among the E.E.C. countries in this country, at whose expense is it? Is it at the expense of our farmers or our friends in the Commonwealth?

Mr. Rippon: I think the position of third-country suppliers will be affected over a long period, but one of the results as far as our own farming community is concerned of successful negotiations would be that British home food production would tend to increase.

Mr. Russell Johnston: The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that the Commission had emphasised that should unacceptable circumstances arise within the present or an enlarged Community its survival would demand equitable solutions. Is it not worth re-emphasising that the Government are not prepared to surrender sovereignty but rather to devise

ways by which sovereignty can be productively shared to the benefit of all participants?

Mr. Rippon: That is correct.

Mr. Marten: Why does my right hon. and learned Friend not clearly answer the question from the right hon. Gentleman? When he says that five years was not enough for New Zealand and the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, what period does he think is enough? He must have some idea. Can he tell the House what it is. Also, what are the safeguards he is asking for to ensure that we do not have an intolerable strain on our balance of payments even after eight years?

Mr. Rippon: Regarding New Zealand, we have asked for something in the nature of continuing arrangements subject to review—for nobody's arrangements are absolutely permanent—but we have not specified any period of years. On our contribution to Community finance, perhaps my hon. Friend ought to await the proposals which we shall be putting forward as soon as possible.

Mr. J. T. Price: The right hon. and learned Gentleman made a passing reference, in a few words, to our relationships with Hong Kong. Did the right hon. and learned Gentleman make it clear to his opposite numbers in Brussels that we in this country have been at the receiving end for far too long of the cheap imports from Hong Kong, particularly textiles? Two-thirds of our textile industry has been destroyed by unfair competition from Hong Kong and other Eastern countries, and 40 per cent. of our home market is occupied by the exports of that part of the world to this country. Will he make it clear on a suitable occasion when this matter is being ventilated, as it is bound to be, that whilst we have been on the receiving end of these vast imports of cheaply-produced goods, to the destruction of our industry, the Six have been taking only about 5 per cent., against the 45 per cent, absorbed by Britain? When may we have some equity in this matter if we are expected to be partners and not merely slaves?

Mr. Rippon: I regard that as a singularly unhelpful intervention. It shows that the hon. Gentleman is not aware of the problems of Hong Kong. What we


are concerned with in these negotiations is to protect the people of Hong Kong, who have a volatile political situation with which to contend. We have asked our colleagues in the Community to keep in mind the needs of Hong Kong in regard to the generalised preference scheme and to ensure that there is no discriminsation against Hong Kong vis-à-vis for example, South Korea or Taiwan.

Mr. Wolrige-Gordon: May I press the right hon. and learned Gentleman a little further on this fisheries question? Are we to take it that the reason why it has not been included in the five-year period so far is that it has not been discussed? If not, why not?

Mr. Rippon: We have to agree broad terms. The Community has gone as far as it can to indicate the likelihood of agreement on the periods and agrees that we should work on that basis. We then have to determine what happens in the transitional period, and that applies across the board. As for the fishery regulation which rightly worried hon. Members on both sides of the House, we have said that it was introduced at an unfortunate moment. It only applies as of now to the Community itself. We have reserved our position on that, and I am satisfied that we shall have to raise the matter again in some detail.

Mr. Prentice: Apart from New Zealand dairy produce and Commonwealth sugar, is not the right hon. Gentleman negotiating about any other aspect of Commonwealth trade at all? At the end of the five-year period, apart from those Commonwealth countries which become associated with the Community, will other aspects of Commonwealth trade become subject to the common external tariff?

Mr. Rippon: We have been negotiating about the Commonwealth trading position as a whole. As regards the developed Commonwealth countries, with the exception of New Zealand and its special position, adequate arrangements can be made within the transitional periods that we are negotiating. That is a matter of timing. I have indicated already that our dependent territories have been offered association under Part

IV, subject to the discussions about Hong Kong. I have indicated the Community's agreement about independent developing countries in Africa. We still have to deal with Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland which, technically have a customs union with South Africa. We also have to deal with the problems of independent developing countries in the Indian Ocean, the Pacific and the Caribbean. The Associated States in the Caribbean have already been offered association under Part IV. In one way or another, we are looking after the interests of all the Commonwealth in detail. We shall also be discussing, as we go along, the position of the Asian members of the Commonwealth.

Sir A. Meyer: Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that the proposals for monetary union envisaged in the Werner Report, which are always brandished by the right hon. Member for Stepney (Mr. Shore) and the right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) offer this country a very hopeful prospect in that our currency could be bolstered by the strong reserves of the Common Market countries?

Mr. Rippon: Like the other members of an enlarged Community, we would have a great interest in these developments. The position of Her Majesty's Government is that which was expressed by the present Leader of the Opposition in the last Parliament. We are prepared to go as far and as fast in this matter as the rest of the Community. It must be understood that, during the period of the negotiations, nothing is likely to happen which in any way prejudices our national interests in these matters.

Mr. Shore: At the end of this inadequate and truncated transitional period of five years, will companies be free to move funds for investment purposes anywhere within the area of the Six, and will private persons be able to acquire shares on their stock exchanges and buy land and houses in the countries of the Six? If so, has the right hon. Gentleman made any effort to quantify the effects of this on the British balance of payments?

Mr. Rippon: We have asked for a five-year transitional period in respect of capital movements. We have to accept the position as it is and may subsequently


develop in the Community. No completely accurate estimate could be made of the likely effect, say, in 1978.

Mr. Crouch: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware of the growing admiration in the country and in this House for the way in which he has handled these negotiations, in a steady and sound fashion—

Mr. Orme: What negotiations?

Mr. Crouch: But, above all, for the way in which he is prepared to look the facts in the face, accepting the truth both where it appears satisfactory and where it appears to hurt. It is this line of approach which is appreciated most in the country.

Mr. Rippon: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It must be understood that with the transitional periods that we are proposing—the five-year period in these four respects—there is no reason to suppose that they do not represent a satisfactory arrangement for us. I am grateful to my colleagues in the Community for indicating that they are likely to look on these proposals with favour.

Mr. Sheldon: In the five-year transitional period for industrial articles, is it expected that there will be a straight line reduction of tariffs of, say, 20 per cent, every year for five years? Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman say whether the period for the harmonisation of fiscal arrangements also remains at five years?

Mr. Rippon: Given the acceptance of the five-year period for industry, there would be an accelerated reduction of tariffs in the early period. The Commission has proposed the possibility of a 40 per cent, cut in the first year. I think that that would be reasonably satisfactory. As for the five-year period for fiscal harmonisation, I think that that is adequate for any matter that one can foresee arising at the moment.

Mr. McMaster: Can my right hon. and learned Friend say whether, in his discussions in Brussels, he has yet discussed the provisions of the Treaty of Rome which relate to the free movement of labour? If not, when these matters come to be discussed, will he bear in mind the considerable apprehension in Northern

Ireland, in view of the rising rate of unemployment in the area, and ask himself whether a five-year period is suitable?

Mr. Rippon: That is certainly a matter that we shall be raising.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman assure us that no attempt is being made in the negotiations to bring South Africa into the arrangements for maintaining special Commonwealth preference?

Mr. Rippon: Like all the third country suppliers—Commonwealth countries—South Africa is covered by the transitional arrangements. Therefore, South Africa naturally has an interest in that aspect of the negotiations.

Sir F. Bennett: Will my right hon. and learned Friend say a further word about the state of the fishing negotiations? Is it the position at the moment that negotiations are going on? If they are completed before we gain entry, since we shall not have been a party to them, is there any possibility of their being reopened? Can my right hon. Friend also say a word about the Channel Islands, which is a matter that I have asked him about before?

Mr. Rippon: We appreciate the special position of the Channel Islands. We have not gone into this in detail, but we shall, and I appreciate my hon. Friend's concern.
On the matter of the fisheries regulation, at an early stage I said to the Community that it might make things difficult if the situation were to change in a serious way while we were negotiating, and we have subsequently agreed that we shall have close regard to the way in which policies which we have to apply independently while negotiations are going on are affecting the outcome. We made our comments on the fisheries regulation, and we preserved our position about that entirely.

Mr. Michael Stewart: In view of the many questions that have been asked about Commonwealth aspects, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that there are many hon. Members who want to see this country enter the Community, who understand that this country must accept certain costs and difficulties to set off against the great benefits of


entry, but who think that it would be intolerable if we had to enter on terms which were destructive of the welfare of Commonwealth countries to which we are under an immense obligation? Is the Minister satisfied that this is fully understood on the other side of the Channel?

Mr. Rippon: I think that over a period of years the Community has fully understood that when we put the Commonwealth case we are putting it as a matter of honour, duty and obligation to our friends in the Commonwealth, and that we are concerned with their interest and not just with our own narrow, national interests in this regard. If as a result of entering the Community this country is stronger and the enlarged Community is stronger, all will benefit, including the Commonwealth.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: Should we not be concerned, not only to shield Commonwealth countries transitionally against the effects of departing from the established principles of Commonwealth preference, but also to retain for Britain and, indeed, for our European partners, the great opportunities that there are in these Commonwealth countries, including the old Commonwealth countries? Is not there a danger that in Australia, where we have a favourable balance of payments trade, Britain and the European countries will lose to the Japanese and Americans? Cannot the Europeans understand this? Can my right hon. and learned Friend not explain this?

Mr. Rippon: I think that they understand it very well. In recent years European trade with the Commonwealth has been increasing quite considerably, and I assume that this will continue. There is no reason why it should be affected by our negotiations. I think that the likelihood of greater Commonwealth trade with Europe will be enhanced as the negotiations are carried to success.

Dr. Gilbert: Reverting to the matter of the free employment of labour, is the Minister proposing to have discussions with the Six about modifying the present provisions of the Treaty of Rome in this respect, or is he prepared to accept them as they stand in toto? If the latter is the case, would not the result of the proposals which we expect from his right hon. Friends be that whereas citizens of

the Six will be able to come and go in this country without let or hindrance, all Commonwealth citizens will be treated as aliens?

Mr. Rippon: As I have said, we are to have discussions about the effect of this provision, and I shall be reporting to the House on that aspect of the matter. I do not foresee any insuperable obstacles in this regard.

Mr. Moate: Will my right hon. and learned Friend recognise that there will be widespread disappointment in the horticulture industry over the way in which he has retreated to a five-year transitional period, and that this period is inadequate for this important industry? will he also recognise that the transitional arrangements for both agriculture and the Commonwealth do not satisfy the pledges that have been given over and over again about obtaining full safeguards before we would countenance entry into the Common Market?

Mr. Rippon: I do not accept that. What we put forward as an opening bid, indicating what we thought was a reasonable period of adjustment, was three years for industry, six years for agriculture, and one year for Euratom and for coal and steel. The Community replied, "You want to get all the industrial benefits before you come in fully on the agricultural side." We foresaw that that point of view might be expressed. The suggestion which I put forward for five years and five years is designed to protect the position of agriculture and horticulture, and we feel that it is an adequate period. It is a period which, all being well, and assuming the success of the negotiations, will run from 1st January, 1973, to 1978. Any problems of substance that are likely to be thrown up within certain spheres of agriculture or horticulture will have been met and dealt with in that period.

Mr. McBride: I put it to the Minister that the real reason for the delay in telling us of Britain's financial contribution to the E.E.C. is that, as chief negotiator, he has failed to secure a ceiling for future British financial contributions to the Community budget knowing, as does the country, how seriously detrimental these will be to our balance of payments position.

Mr. Rippon: One cannot talk about failure to secure something when one has not even made a proposal. As I told the


House, we intend to make proposals as soon as possible on what I regard as a crucial aspect of these negotiations.

Mr. Eadie: The right hon. and learned Gentleman has been talking about the question of negotiations. Does he agree that he accepted a one-year period for coal and steel—

Mr. Rippon: No.

Mr. Eadie: The right hon. and learned Gentleman informed the House that one year had been accepted. Will he tell us how this magical figure of one year arose? Was it negotiation, or was it capitulation? Does he agree that there is talk of tampering with the structure of the steel industry in this country in order to facilitate our entry into the E.E.C.?

Mr. Rippon: I must put the record straight. That was our proposal, but it has not been accepted. We put it forward for negotiation on the basis that, on the best advice that we had received, one year was sufficient for us to adapt to the rules of the Coal and Steel Community, and Euratom.

Mr. Skeet: As the Community has been dumping agricultural surpluses on world markets, and this is its own surplus, does it understand my right hon. Friend's point when he says that New Zealand must be treated as a special case, or is the Community speaking with a dual voice?

Mr. Rippon: I cannot follow exactly what my hon. Friend is saying. We know that there are problems in certain surpluses. The chances are that in the Community for a period of years up to 1978 some things will go out of surplus and new things will go into it. We have been concerned to express the definite dependence of New Zealand on its exports of dairy products, butter and cheese, and we have put forward proposals accordingly. [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman asks about lamb. My right hon. Friend who is now the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his initial statement, as did Lord George-Brown, as he now is, in 1967, emphasised the importance of New Zealand's lamb exports. Provided that there is no sheep meat regulation which might change the position, in which case we would have to reopen the matter, and as things stand we see no difficulty about New Zealand's exports of meat.

Mr. Barnes: On the important question of equitable solutions being found unacceptable if certain situations develop for any member country, is it not the case that this has been very much the pattern in the Community so far? Is the Minister satisfied that the Community appreciates the importance to Britain of this being reaffirmed in the heads of agreement when they are reached?

Mr. Rippon: I think that the Community understands our point of view. It says that we should not be too worried because all the history of the Community shows that it moves cautiously and pragmatically, that it has always had regard to what any member may regard as a vital interest, and it has acted accordingly.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke: Can my right hon. and learned Friend tell the House whether, in view of his remarkably rapid success in reaching agreement in principle on transitional periods for agriculture and industry, he has real hopes of accelerated progress in negotiations on other important matters? In particular, can he assure those who look forward to getting the benefits of entry at the first possible opportunity that we may expect some agreement on the vital matter of the financial contribution by the summer of next year?

Mr. Rippon: I certainly hope that that will be the timetable, because in these matters uncertainty is helpful neither to existing members nor to new applicants. I cannot precisely forecast the timetable. We still have some difficult issues to resolve. As I said in my statement, we have fixed meetings for next year up to June, but we have also agreed that we can speed up the meetings if we have accelerated progress. I suggested that we might need extra days in June and in April, but the Chairman of the Community suggested that we might need an extra day in March if things are progressing rapidly. I hope that that will be so.

Mr. Alfred Morris: Further to the point of the extremely persuasive part of the question put by my right hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. Michael Stewart), does the Minister recognise that the problem of our trading relations with the poorer Commonwealth countries is the most sensitive of all problems in


these negotiations? Is he aware that many of us regard the future of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement as a matter of honour for us which is non-negotiable in Brussels?

Mr. Rippon: We have explained to the Community that we are absolutely bound by the terms of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement as it now stands. It is due for renegotiation at a certain point. Our concern is that the enlarged Community should have good trading relations with all the developing countries of the world, including Commonwealth countries. We are desperately concerned about trade with the small developing Commonwealth countries and the need to protect it, and the best way that we can protect it is to ensure that we are strong enough, within the enlarged Community, to be able to buy what they have to sell.

Mr. John E. B. Hill: Since the enlarged Community will have a decisive influence upon the pattern of world trade, is it not the case that the Community recognises that the very difficult problems of New Zealand and the Commonwealth Sugar producers—about which we feel so strongly—are as much their problems as ours?

Mr. Rippon: I am happy to say that I believe that to be true. It is very much in line with the speech made by Mr. Mansholt in July of this year. I believe that the enlarged Community would pursue liberal and outward-looking trading policies, especially in relation to developing countries.

Mr. E. L. Mallalieu: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept my view that he is doing very well? Will he further realise that for every rumble of the economic Luddites who resent any attempt to put national sovereignty in its right place there are at least three in this House and in the country who believe that national sovereignty is an anachronism, and the sooner it is removed to its reluctant death the better?

Mr. Rippon: I am grateful to the hon. and learned Member for what he had to say in the first part of his question. We must get national sovereignty in the modern world into its right perspective. I agree that in joining an enlarged Community—as would be the case with any

other alliance—we enhance our own sovereignty by pooling with that of others. The French have certainly not lost so much sovereignty as to give them any great cause to be concerned.

Mr. Adley: Does not my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the suggestion that all our agricultural produce comes either from the Commonwealth or from the home market ignores the fact that a substantial amount comes from other countries? Does he not also agree that the proposition that the choice is between the Community and the Commonwealth is quite incorrect, and will he take the first opportunity, and every opportunity, to emphasise that a strong Commonwealth probably depends for its future upon our own entry into the European Economic Community?

Mr. Rippon: That is certainly my personal belief. Patterns of world trade are changing all the time, whether we are in or out of the Community. In our negotiations we have had regard—as we must have—to the effect that our entry might have upon traditional suppliers, whether members of the Commonwealth or not.

Mr. Raphael Tuck: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman now answer a question that I put to him on Monday; namely, do Her Majesty's Government favour or disfavour the Werner Committee's proposals for a federal decision centre? Secondly, does not he think that his recent actions in Europe accord with what was said by a British Prime Minister 20 years ago; namely, "If you can't concede, try, try, try again"?

Mr. Rippon: The hon. Member persists in his misunderstanding of the position about the Werner Report. The first stages present no problems for us. The second stages would arise only when we were members of the Community, when we should have a full opportunity of seeing whether any particular step accorded with our views. We would be taking part in Community decisions. As for the third stage, that may be a valuable long-term objective but it is very far in the future. It involves amendment of the Treaty of Rome, and I do not think that it is relevant to these negotiations.

Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot move on. I must protect the business of the House.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (RATE SUPPORT GRANTS)

Mr. Speaker: It has been suggested to me—if it has the approval of both sides of the House—that we take the first two local government Orders together—one on the rate grant and one on the rate grant increase. Is there any objection, If not, then the Minister will move the first Order and we shall debate both of them. If necessary, at the end of the debate we can divide on each Order separately.

Mr. Stanley R. McMaster: On a point of order. May I express through you, Mr. Speaker, some apprehension about the number of naked lights and paraffin lights that are about, and ask whether a supply of buckets of sand or water may be made available? Will you also urge hon. Members who may not be used to handling these articles that they are dangerous, and that some precautions should be taken because of all the papers that are about, and the fabric of the building?

Mr. Speaker: I thank the hon. Member for his anxiety. We must carry on under difficulties. I said yesterday that for centuries the House has carried on under difficulties compared with which these are nothing. I still hope that in spite of what the hon. Member has said we may have a greater number of lights. I understood that there was to be an attempt to hang some from the Lobbies—[Laughter.]—I mean, from the galleries. I am grateful to the House for its forbearance in relation to supplementary questions. I found it difficult to see those hon. Members who were in the remote corners.

5.7 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Peter Walker): I beg to move,
That the Rate Support Grant Order, 1970, dated 20th November, 1970, a copy of which was laid before this House on 26th November, be approved.
The subject of rate support grants and their technicalities is a topic that would tend to send the House to sleep without its being in darkness. I apologise to the House for the technicality of this topic. This is the third rate support grant Order to be made by this House since the new system of rate supports came in about

six years ago. I want to make one or two general remarks about the system of rate support and the way in which it has operated, especially in the last year.
First, it is vital that we should recognise the enormous dimensions of the expenditure that we are involved in in local government. If we take both current expenditure and capital expenditure of local government, local government now administers about £480 a year for every family of four. Therefore, local government is responsible for the administration of about £9 a week for every such family. Thus, it is an enormous sphere of expenditure, and it is vital that every precaution is taken to see that the money so spent is spent efficiently and effectively, and is administered well. Of this total current expenditure, the central Government are currently providing 57 per cent., which, as a result of these Orders, will rise to 58 per cent. over the two-year period. Thus, the taxpayer has a considerable payment to make for all the expenditure of local authorities.
I am concerned about the myth which tends to be built up that the rate support grant is a sort of benevolent act on the part of the Government, irrespective of the fact that the money has to be found. When we are talking about the proportion that should be met by the central Government, we are really talking about the proportion that should be met by the taxpayer as opposed to the ratepayer. The proposals made here are designed to increase that proportion, as indeed the proportions have been increased since these Orders first came in.
Another part of the machinery of rate support is the increase Order, one of which I am moving—and it is a substantial increase Order at that.
This concerns the increases that take place primarily in terms of costs and wages on those matters which are agreed as being appropriate for grant. In looking back over the six years, I hope that the House will recognise that on one occasion this procedure was broken. That was in 1968, when the then Government told local authorities that they would not move an increase Order, although local government was fully entitled to have one moved under these procedures.
Perhaps in considering the total pattern of rate support grants in the six years


during which they have been in operation, and the request that I have made to local authorities this year to reduce the total agreed expenditure by £10 million in the first year and £25 million in the second year, it will be borne in mind that the single act in 1968 of refusing an increase Order had a total effect of £100 million over that period, of which local authorities managed to save, by various methods, £50 million, though they had to pass on £50 million to the ratepayers at that time.
I believe that that is the wrong way to apply a Government decision—to try to squeeze local authorities—because it puts them in a position of impossible uncertainty about the future. We have, therefore, accepted, under the normal formula, the increase Orders that have to be made, and now local authorities are clear for the coming two years about the type of savings that they should make within the total amount specified here.
There are three basic elements to this Order: the domestic element, the resources element and the need element. In coming to our consideration of the total, the Government have three major matters to take into account. The first is the position on present expenditure and the general forecast. The second is any change or changes in demand and population changes that are likely to take place.
For example, on the question of demand, there is the likely increase in the size of the population in the schools or the likely increase in the number of elderly people needing welfare services. There are, of course, in addition, the various changes in population that take place in different parts of the country.
The third consideration is the general economic situation, and the total of the grant is always made within that context.
One of the most fundamental points is the agreeing of the figures. All sides in the consultations this year are agreed that there was a better method of agreeing the figures than there has ever been before. There was agreement on the figures, and officials of both the local authority associations and of my Department put in a new system for examining the position, and this covers a long period. On behalf of both sides of the House, I wish to pay tribute to those who took part in these talks and the

manner in which they reached detailed agreement on this difficult and complicated matter.
Officials of the local authority associations and my Department spent many hours and put in a great deal of work trying to reach a settled agreement about the exact nature of the figures. All agree that the system adopted this year was beter than that adopted ever before. However, they have agreed to try to find even better ways of tackling the problem, and I am sure that the parties concerned will achieve their aim in this respect.
As to the domestic element, traditionally up to now there has been an increase in this element of 5d. per year to the benefit of the domestic ratepayer. The proposals for the coming year are to reduce this to 2·8d. in old terms. I prefer to stick to the old rather than go in for the new pence in this matter, mainly because this method is better comprehended at this time in our history.
This is still, however, within the general theme of the original White Paper on the system of giving this particular form of advantage to the domestic element. It was suggested that over the years there was a need for this, so that the total increase should not fall on the domestic sector. Hence, the alleviation that look place. It was originally envisaged that about one-half should be met by this domestic element. In the past few years more than one-half has been met by the domestic element, and these proposals will tend to bring it more in line with the original intention of the White Paper. There will still, as a result of the increase in the total percentage, be enough to meet the whole of the suggested increase in the domestic element. There will also be a surplus on top which will go to the benefit of the general ratepayer.
As for the progression of the increase, which, in the past, has been by 1 per cent, per annum, we are suggesting here that for the next two years it should be one-half of 1 per cent. per annum. In this connection when considering the original intentions, it is interesting to note that in debating the Second Reading of the legislation that brought the present system into operation, the then Minister was asked whether the increase of 1 per cent. per annum would go on for ever.
He replied that it clearly could not and that it could go on only for a period. There must obviously come a time when the 1 per cent. increase must slow down, and it is for this reason that we have considered it right, instead of eliminating the 1 per cent. increase, to reduce the rate of increase by one-half of 1 per cent., and that is the proposal made in this Order.
I will put to hon. Members the basic consideration which we took into account in reaching this decision. I compare these with the altitude of the previous Government when they last increased an Order of this description, which was, of course, in the Order of 1968. First, as for the general view that local authority expenditure must have some relationship in its increase to the general increase in the gross national product and the strength of the economy, in 1968 the Government of the day said in their White Paper:
'Taking local authority expenditure as a whole, the Government expects that in 1969–70 local authorities as a whole will restrain the level of their expenditure so that it does not in total exceed a figure in the region of 3 per cent, in real terms above what has already. been agreed for purposes of the Exchequer contribution in 1968–69, and the Government will propose rate support grant for 1969–70 on this, basis when the time comes'".
Thus the Government clearly stated that due to the lack of growth in the economy and due to the fact that local authority expenditure had consistently risen faster than the rate of growth, there was a need to put some sort of curb on the rate of increase of local government expenditure.
The White Paper went on:
Expenditure by local authorities is therefore a very important factor in the management of the economy. In the past, moreover, local authority revenue expenditure has grown at an annual rate of 6 per cent. or more a year in real terms and much faster than the growth of the economy as a whole. Divergence on this scale cannot be allowed to continue, and the Government foresee the need for continuing restraint in the growth of local authority revenue expenditure over the years immediately ahead".
Therefore, the then Government considered that due to the rate of economic growth and the need to relate the increase in local government expenditure to that growth, there was need to fix the rate support grant in that year on the basis of an increase in real terms of 3 per cent. in the first year and 5 per

cent. in the second year. What I am proposing now is what for two years will be a faster rate of growth than was envisaged in the previous White Paper and, once again, in real terms at constant prices.
There is also need for the House to consider the individual elements which have gone into making up the total picture, and which are discussed in both White Papers item by item. Perhaps I may bring the attention of the House once again to comparisons of the two White Papers. In 1968 the previous Government said on the subject of education:
The expenditure envisaged in education allows in full for the expected increases in the numbers of pupils in primary and secondary schools and for the likely growth of further and higher education. It takes account of the increase in loan charges as a result of the growth of the educational building programmes, and of the expected increase in the numbers of teachers in primary and secondary schools, which should make possible some improvement in staffing standards. There will however be room for only a limited improvement in other standards.
That was the view which the then Government had for expenditure on education over the two years in question.
On this occasion my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science has already announced proposals which affect the position, particularly in regard to primary schools, and, therefore, in the passage on education, although once again we had to suggest that there was need for a certain degree of restraint, we have taken account of the increases proposed by my right hon. Friend. Perhaps I can give the House the comparison in respect of education. This Order provides for a growth rate in 1971–72, the first year, of the order of 5·1 per cent. and in the second year of 4·9 per cent., in real terms, compared with the provision in the previous White Paper of 3·8 per cent. and 3·9 per cent. for the two years there concerned. So, on education, this rate support grant in real terms provides for an improvement in the education services at a faster rate of growth than that envisaged in the White Paper introduced in 1968.
On local health and welfare services my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services has made a pronouncement that part of the total Government measures in this sphere is to carry out greater activity in certain aspects


of health provision, particularly in respect of expenditure on services for the mentally handicapped, the mentally ill and the elderly. As a result, the rate support grant provides for a substantial rate of growth in those services. In the two years covered by it the welfare estimates give a growth rate in 1971–72 of 16·9 per cent, and in 1972–73 of 12·3 per cent. In the previous Government's White Paper there were substantial movements in the first year and a slowing down in the second, the figures being 16 per cent, and 7·3 per cent.
Total police expenditure includes expenditure on traffic wardens. The 1968 White Paper provided for quite a substantial increase in growth expenditure for the purpose of recruiting more traffic wardens then. The increase expected in this expenditure for the coming year will not need, in the view of those concerned with the estimates, as much growth on the traffic warden side but a faster rate of growth in the police force itself. Those figures are included in the provisions.
Another important item is sewerage. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) would agree that it would be very nice if someone could invent a very cheap way of handling sewage. The Jeger Report said that there was need for a substantial increase in expenditure on sewerage. This is a world-wide problem. One must confess to a slight sadness as one goes round the country opening various sewerage works to replace former works built in the 1890s to see a remarkable similarity between the two. One would have hoped that the advance of technology and chemical engineering might have done something to provide a less expensive method of dealing with this enormous problem. We now envisage considerable increases of Government and local government expenditure on sewerage. For the two years within this present Order we envisage increases of 7·7 per cent, and 7·2 per cent, in real terms. This current expenditure will be accompanied by very substantial capital expenditure in this direction.
Perhaps I can now compare the position of highways and roads as dealt with in the two White Papers. In the 1968 White Paper the then Government stated:
The standard of maintenance of roads of lesser importance in this country has generally

been on a high level, but given the country's economic situation, and in view of the limited amount of resources that can be spared for roads as a whole, including the national road system, the Government's view is that no serious risk is involved in continuing to impose severe restriction on maintenance expenditure on minor roads in 1969–70 and 1970–71.
This year we are having a level of expenditure on non-principal roads which reflects the restrictions announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the allocation of capital expenditure by local authorities. Where the general standard is considered to be good an allowance has been made for a reasonable increase of expenditure, so in the total estimates it is envisaged that some maintenance work will be contemplated.
We see a growth of expenditure on these various items which are a consistent reflection of Government policy. There is a substantial increase in education, although there is a reduction, once again as a result of Government policies, in expenditure on school meals and milk. This, as I say, is part of the policy proposals announced by the Government.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: With regard to expenditure on education and, in particular, with regard to the amount of money being spent on the reallocation of primary schools, has the right hon. Gentleman taken notice of the plight in Derbyshire? Having been a member of the education committee there prior to coming to this House, I know that we were rather concerned about the allocation made by the previous Government, which was then set at 3·6 per cent. of the total allocation. When I went to my constituency last weekend I found that a Press statement had been issued by the county council, Tory controlled as it is—by the Tory chairman of the education committee—saying that the allocation had fallen from the 4·1 and 3·6 of the previous two years to 0·4 per cent, in this allocation—a drastic reduction of 89 per cent. What has the Minister to say about that?

Mr. Walker: It is certainly not as a result of what we are discussing now. We are discussing the rate support grant in respect of education for the coming two years, and there is a substantial increase in real terms in the rate of growth in education for the coming two years as opposed to the amounts in the previous two years which were designated


by the previous Government. I cannot make a detailed comment on the primary school building position in Derbyshire without prior notice of the facts, but for primary schools in general announcements have been made of a substantial step up on the programme previously envisaged by the previous Government.

Mr. Skinner: Will the Secretary of State accept that whilst this is not a matter of dealing with specific capital expenditure in 1972–73, he referred a few minutes ago very briefly to the growth of capital expenditure?

Mr. Walker: I do not deny that I mentioned capital expenditure, but we are here dealing with the rate support grant. As to capital expenditure on primary schools, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science has announced a considerable stepping up of the primary school programme, and that is a fact.
I come now to what is, perhaps, the most controversial question from the point of view of the local authorities; that is to say, my decision that, after having agreed the estimates and the total figures with them, I would ask them to make an additional cut in their total expenditure of £10 million in the first year and of £25 million in the second year.
I recognise that the local authorities, having sat down with us and discussed their estimates and figures, are, naturally, disappointed to receive a general request of that nature when they have many things on which they would like to go ahead. However, I think that to make a general request to them for efficiency and a cutting back is a much better method than the one used by the previous Government when they refused an increase in 1968. I consider that there is still considerable scope for making general savings over the whole sphere of local government expenditure.

Mr. Julius Silverman: The reductions of £10 million and £25 million are to encourage efficiency. Is not this cut applied equally to local authorities which are inefficient and to those which are already efficient? Is not that the consequence of the method which the Minister proposes?

Mr. Walker: Yes, but one could argue that as a defect in the system as such since we do not do a separate negotiation with each of the 1,600 local authorities. As the system stands, there is one financial negotiation in which the Government can exercise a certain overall influence. As I say, the last Government acted by refusing to give £100 million in an increase Order, saying that local authorities were expected to make this up by improvements in efficiency and savings elsewhere.
We are making a graduated request which, in terms of the total expenditure, is of relatively small proportions. I believe that it works out at ¼ per cent, in the first year and ⅔ per cent, in the second year. I do not use those figures as statistics to be strongly defended because I recognise that there is a large section of local government expenditure which cannot be varied; on items such as teachers' salaries and so forth one cannot show any overall saving. Therefore, in referring to percentages of that sort, I recognise that local authorities cannot make savings throughout, but there is, nevertheless, a massive area of expenditure in which one can work for the relatively limited saving which I have requested.
There are two ways in which local authorities generally could be more active than they have been in securing higher standards of efficiency. First, I refer to their own organisation, L.A.M.S.A.C. the Local Authorities Management Services and Computer Committee, an advisory organisation for management consultancy on the use of computers and the like. Those local authorities which have used this service—about half of them—have found considerable benefit. What I find depressing, however, is that, although many of the major towns and cities have used the service, less than 40 per cent, of the smaller authorities have contacted the organisation with a view to taking advantage of its services. I should expect the smaller authorities to gain more benefit from them. L.A.M.S.A.C. set up a small consultancy service for work study six months ago, and it has just decided to double its service by providing further officers for this purpose.
A charge is made for the service, but I understand that the fees are much lower


than those charged by private consultants, and I believe that in this way the local authority associations collectively, by supporting L.A.M.S.A.C., are trying to bring to the attention of local government a very useful service. I believe that, used to a much greater extent, it could greatly help.
The other way in which savings could be made is through purchasing methods. Local authorities purchase about £1,000 million worth of goods a year. They are very big buyers indeed. Recent legislation passed by the previous Government gave them powers to collaborate with neighbouring authorities in purchasing schemes. They can, therefore, have the benefit of greater bulk purchasing by getting together. I am sure that in this way, bearing in mind the tremendous level of local authority purchasing, authorities could find ways of reducing their costs and helping to make the savings for which we are asking, savings which, as I have said, are relatively small in terms of the total.
Although there is this criticism made by the local authorities at the additional imposition, at the end of the negotiations, asking for a degree of increased efficiency, I believe that they will not only recognise overall that we have operated the rate support grant system more efficiently than ever before as a result of the detailed negotiations which took place, but also, in view of the general economic position and the lack of growth over the past few years, they will recognise that, in asking them to go ahead with a rate of growth much faster than the rate of growth in expenditure by the central Government, we are being fair and reasonable.
On that basis, I commend the Orders to the House.

5.35 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Crosland: The Secretary of State said that this was a subject which might send the House to sleep. That is certainly not true of the content of the subject, which is of the greatest importance to every citizen. It might be said to be true of the right hon. Gentleman's rather soporific speech. I can think of no greater contrast than that between the speech which the right hon. Gentleman made today and the one

which he made in the equivalent debate on the previous rate support grant Order two years ago. He was then very polemical, party-political and irresponsible in the line which he took. He accused the Government, above all, of concealing the consequences of what they were doing, both for the standard of local authority services and for what would happen to the rates.
Here are one or two typical sentences from the right hon. Gentleman's speech on 9th December, 1968. He said:
I assure him "—
the then Minister—
that if, in our judgment, the economic situation was very bad—for example, as bad as we were told it was a fortnight ago—then, obviously, we should have to be as tough as this and perhaps even tougher".
The present Government have been not merely as tough as that; they have been even tougher. He went on:
… but we would tell the country precisely what the position was and what we were doing ".
That we certainly did not hear this afternoon. He said, a little later:
I urge them "—
that is, the then Government, two years ago—
to be honest with the country and to tell the people that there will be a need for an increase in rates or a cutting down of services."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th December, 1968; Vol. 775. c. 50-59.]
We certainly have not been told that bluntly or frankly this afternoon.
Two years ago, a large part of the right hon. Gentleman's speech and that of his hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page), whom we have with us on the Front Bench this evening, was concerned also with the lack of information both in the Order and in the speeches of Ministers at the time. There is an almost total lack of information given to the House today. We have not been told how the increase in estimated expenditure in these two years compares with the average, for example, of the last five years or the last 10 years. We were told nothing about what the consequences would be either for rates in general or for the domestic ratepayer in particular. I can remember no similar debate of this kind when the House was given less information.
One thing is absolutely clear, however. The Order accurately reflects the Government's basic philosophy. This is an Order hostile to essential public expenditure. It is an Order which shifts the burden of essential local services from national taxation, which is broadly progressive, to the local rates, which are socially regressive. Taken in conjunction with the Chancellor's mini-budget of a few weeks ago, the Order continues a deliberate process of redistributing income from the less well off to the better off. I shall substantiate each of those points one by one.
First, I say that the Order is hostile to essential public spending. There can be no doubt about how essential this local spending is. These debates are, for natural reasons, usually not very well attended, but the subject is nevertheless of direct relevance to basic standards in education, in the health services and personal social services, in the police service, in the fire service, in the sewage treatment and refuse disposal services, and the rest.
The Government show hostility to essential public spending because they set out their philosophy clearly, although not for the first time, in the report on the Order. I quote paragraphs 8 and 9:
In view of the Government, the continuing growth of public expenditure … has a harmful effect on the economy and must therefore be restrained … This new approach"—
that is, the new approach of the Government—
is expected to result in the rate of increase in public expenditure over the next four years being substantially less than had previously been envisaged.
Whatever the Secretary of State said this afternoon, his own report makes it cleat that this is also to apply to local expenditure, because it goes on:
…the rate of growth of local authority expenditure will in future be brought more into line with the general rate of growth of the economy.
This reflects the Government's general hostility to public spending, their general view that this and the taxation involved are harmful to the growth of the economy.
They go on saying that despite the evidence from O.E.C.D. and other bodies

that other countries with a higher rate of of taxation compared with g.n.p. nevertheless have a higher rate of growth than we have, and other countries with a higher rate of public expenditure in relation to the g.n.p. nevertheless have a higher rate of growth than we have. Indeed, they ignore the striking recent finding of the O.E.C.D. that countries in which public expenditure has risen most rapidly are also those countries with the highest rate of growth. But hon. Members opposite are so ideological on this subject as to be almost completely blind to any rational argument.
The hostility shows not merely in the philosophy given in paragraphs 8 and 9 of the report, but in terms of the actual estimated increase in local authority expenditure over the next two years. The rate of increase in estimated expenditure—that is, relevant expenditure—is to be 4·2 per cent. in the next two years. This is significantly less than what it was during the years of the Labour Government. I agree that there is an argument, which we had two years ago, about one single year, but as I understand the position—and these figures should be in the report—the increase in local authority expenditure in the years of the Labour Government from 1965–66, when we were moving to the new system, were, broadly, 6¾ per cent., 5¾ per cent., 4 per cent., 4½ per cent. and 5 per cent. So we are to have a decrease in the next two years compared with the average of those years of Labour Government.
The hostility also shows in a point mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman and about which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Aston (Mr. Julius Silverman) asked a question; namely, the so-called efficiency cut—that is to say, the cut of £10 million this year and £25 million next year due to greater efficiency. There is a just comment on this from the local authority associations, which, as the House will know, made a joint statement setting out the matter very well and very accurately. They said:
The local authority associations have been willing, indeed anxious, to co-operate with the Government in seeking increased efficiency and the curtailment of unnecessary increases in expenditure. It was in this spirit that, even before the Chancellor's statement"—
that is some weeks back—
the associations conducted their negotiations with the government departments concerned,


and accepted reductions in departmental forecasts which can only be achieved by operational economies.
They are therefore extremely concerned at the Government's proposed further reduction of the forecasts in relevant expenditure by £10 million in 1971–72 and £25 million in 1972–73 … The associations believe that, bearing in mind the present relatively high standards of efficiency, the departmental cuts, and the economies already achieved during the recent years of restraint, it will be difficult for local authorities to bear this double cut in grant without a significant increase in the rates or some curtailment in the planned development of services, or both.
We did not have any serious comment this afternoon on that possibility.
Everyone must be in favour of greater efficiency in local government, but it is particularly hard to achieve because local government is the most labour-intensive of all our services, our professions, our industries, whatever it may be called. It is extremely hard to make rapid increases in efficiency. To me this sounds like a cut which is basically arbitrary and basically capricious and basically designed to show how tough the Government can be with local authorities and how able they are to chastise them when they choose.
My second point is that what we have in the Order is a shift in the burden of local spending from national taxation to local rates, and especially to the domestic ratepayer. As the House well knows, the Labour Government sought to protect the ratepayer, especially the domestic ratepayer, from what would otherwise have been an intolerable burden due to the rising cost of local services.
We did this in two ways. The first was by an increase of 1 per cent. per year in the proportion of relevant expenditure which was covered by the rate support grant. As a consequence, that proportion rose in four years from 54 per cent. to the present 57 per cent., with a corresponding reduction in the proportion borne by local sources. Secondly, we introduced the domestic rate element which was designed to protect the domestic ratepayer in particular and which amounted to a subsidy rising by 5 per cent. a year. This in the last four years has been brought to the present level of 1s. 8d., which is the amount by which the burden on the domestic ratepayer has been reduced from what it would otherwise have been.
Now the Government have halved both increases. The proportion of local expenditure to be matched by Government grant is to go up by only ½ per cent. instead of 1 per cent. The domestic rate element is to go up not by 5d. a year but by 2·8d. and 2·4d. in the next two years. What will be the effect of that? We heard very little about the consequences from the Secretary of State. Clearly, the consequences for local authority finance will be most painful. This was made clear in the statement of the associations, and I repeat one crucial sentence:
… it will be difficult for local authorities to bear this double cut in grant without a significant increase in the rates or some curtailment in the planned development of services, or both.
That is the final comment of the associations.
The matter was also summed up very well in an article in this month's Municipal Review—I am anxious not to quote party sources. The Municipal Review said:
So long as the rating system remains unreformed, but yet the major course of local finance, local authorities are at a severe disadvantage. The Government's cut will be particularly burdensome at a time of almost unprecedented inflation when swingeing increases in rates are in any event forecast for the next financial year, but this is apparently what has been decided upon. It now remains for Parliament to exercise its judgment.
I hope that Parliament will exercise some judgment today, and I look forward to hearing speeches from a number of hon. Members opposite in the light of the speeches which they made when we discussed the more generous rate support grant order two years ago. I am glad to see that the hon. Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Temple) and the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Murton) are present. They and others described the then rate support grant order as disgraceful, scandalous, inevitably involving either a large increase in the rates or a substantial reduction in the standard of services, or both.
I am not surprised that the Secretary of State did not choose to quote any passages from his speech, perhaps the most party political of all, in the debate two years ago. I hope that any hon. Members who spoke two years ago and who are thinking of speaking on this subject today will take the precaution of going to the


Library to refresh their memories about what they said two years ago.
I am particularly concerned with the effect on the domestic ratepayer of the cut of 50 per cent. in the increment in the domestic rate element. It is not denied by anyone that rates are an extremely regressive tax. They are a tax that bears very little relation to anyone's capacity to pay. Probably many of us remember the figures quoted by the Allen Committee some time ago which took five income groups and found that the poorest group paid 8·2 per cent. of their disposable income in rates and the richest group paid 2·2 per cent. of their disposable income. There can hardly be any tax we know of in this country which is more socially regressive.

Mr. Arthur Jones: Does the right hon. Gentleman not recognise that the difficulties over regression were added to by the fact that the Socialist Administration would not allow revaluation to take place as intended? This would have substantially relieved the problem.

Mr. Crosland: A revaluation was also postponed by the previous Government. In both cases it was done for good, clear and well-understood technical reasons. What the Labour Government did was slightly to minimise the regressive nature of the rating system by rate rebates, under which last year 800,000 domestic ratepayers were receiving partial or total relief, 80 per cent. of that number being retired persons. Over the four years of the scheme £52 million—and 75 per cent. of that figure comes from the taxpayer—has been paid out in rate rebates. This was a direct measure of social justice. The fact remained that even after these improvements, rates remained an extremely unsatisfactory tax.
That was why the Labour Government introduced the domestic rate element, to put more of the burden of local expenditure on national taxation and less of the burden of that local expenditure on, in particular, the domestic ratepayer. This policy of protecting the domestic ratepayer was in practice very successful. The average domestic rate poundage over the last four years has gone up by 0·5 per cent., 0·6 per cent., 3·8 per cent., and 4·5 per cent. respectively. As the right

hon. Gentleman observed, this was less than half the amount by which it would have gone up but for the domestic rate element.
Now, tragically, although I am afraid typically, this policy is to be reversed and the protection is to be halved. In other words, what we have here is a direct shift in the relative burden between the national taxpayer and the domestic ratepayer. I spoke of the speech made by the hon. Member for Poole two years ago. I look forward very much to a speech from him tonight. Two years ago he said:
It is utterly wrong that the rates should be treated by the Government as a substitute for taxes."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th December, 1968; Vol. 775, c. 74.]
We shall have some extremely interesting questions to ask him. [Interruption.] Oh, I did not know that he is a P.P.S. now—a very wise move on his part. Nevertheless, I look forward to an article by the hon. Gentleman in some suitably public place in which he will explain this marked shift of attitude, unless meanwhile, as honour would suggest, he has resigned his position.
One of the many questions to which we have had no answer is: What will be, the effect of this policy on the rates in the next two years? We have had no estimate of any kind as to the likely increase in rate poundage as a whole and, in particular, in the domestic rate poundage. I calculate that this halving of the domestic rate element combined with the halving of the increased support given by central Government to local government will cost the ratepayer at least £19 million is 1971–72 and £39 million in the second year 1972–73. It should be a perfectly easy calculation for the Minister to make, with all the resources at his disposal, in order to discover what the effect of it is likely to be on the rate poundage generally and on the domestic rate poundage in particular.
We have had estimates in the Press. The Financial Times has suggested a minimum of 11 per cent.; local authority papers have talked of something between 12 per cent. and 15 per cent. Let us have an answer in the House today. The hon. Member for Crosby, who is to wind up, is a great expert in these matters, a mathematician of long standing. Let him be so good, with the help if necessary


of his officials, as to give the House a rough estimate of what the effect will be of this new policy on the domestic ratepayer.
Thirdly, we have to see this Rate Support Grant Order against the background of general Government financial and economic policy. That general policy is to transfer incomes from the less well off to the better off. We started with the Chancellor's mini-budget on 27th October, which took 6d. off income tax, involving £350 million in a full year. The Chancellor also announced a number of increases in charges, amounting to cuts in the social services—free milk, school meals, health charges, commuter fares and the rest of it. I estimate that, even after making allowance for some increase in the hospital and school-building programme, announced simultaneously, this amounts to a reduction in the social services of something like £170 million in a full year.
That is the second part of the total package. We still have the statement on housing to come from the right hon. Gentleman following his introductory statement on 3rd November. This will certainly involve a large increase in rents. It will also involve a further increase in rates if, as I understand it to be the case, the local authorities are to pay part of the cost of any scheme for rebates to the private rented tenant.
In addition to these three items, all having a profound effect on the distribution of income—the cut in income tax, the increase in social charges and the effect of the housing policy yet to come—we now have an increase in rates and a shift from the taxpayer to the ratepayer amounting in 1972–73 to nearly £40 million.

Mr. Martin Maddan: The right hon. Gentleman seems to equate cuts in total expenditure on the social services with giving less help to the community. He ignores the fact that many beneficiaries of the social services are not the needy. He referred to my right hon. Friend's statement on housing. The most needy people in the housing sector are in the privately-rented sector and for the first time they will receive help under the new policy. The facts are the reverse of the generalisations which the right hon. Gentleman has made.

Mr. Crosland: The facts are nowhere near the reverse of the generalisations which I am making. I have estimated that the increase in charges on all counts what is really a cut in the social services—will cost £170 million. I can assure the lion. Gentleman that the Secretary of State has no intention of finding £170 million more with which to assist the privately-rented tenant. All these cuts—school meals, milk and prescription charges—naturally bear more heavily on the less well off. This is not in serious dispute.
I now turn to one or two detailed points.
Dealing with the increase Order, do I understand that it fully compensates for the wage settlement with the manual workers?

Mr. Peter Walker: Mr. Peter Walker indicated assent.

Mr. Crosland: I am glad to learn that. There had been distasteful hints and rumours, including the Prime Minister's television broadcast, suggesting that the local authorities might have been penalised for their wage settlement.
Dealing next with the distribution of estimated expenditure, the right hon. Gentleman indicated certain priority areas of spending where the growth rate will be higher than the average 4·2 per cent. He has mentioned housing improvements, mental health, home help, family planning, sewage and refuse disposal. I am delighted to hear that those are going up faster than the average, although under the present system of general rather than specific grants we cannot of course, enforce those priorities. If those are going above the 4·2 per cent rate, what will go up below that rate?
The report mentions parks, sport and minor roads, and the right hon. Gentleman spoke at some length about minor roads. Well and good, but sewerage is to go up by 7½ per cent.; house improvements are to go up, according to my figures, by 12 per cent. The right hon Gentleman said this afternoon that education was coming out very well, and that the personal social services were coming very well out of this. In that case, some of the field of local spending must do very much worse than 4·2 per cent. to keep the total figure down to that level. It will not be enough to cut out a few


parks or sports grounds or something like that. We shall have to have much more substantial cuts in some of the services if the total is to be held to 4·2 per cent.
I should be grateful if the Minister could give us a rather more specific answer on this when he winds up. If some of the tables in the report were given in percentage terms we might be able to follow it more easily. Incidentally, I found the report extraordinarily inadequate and hard to understand. I cannot make a party point of this. Having re-read our report of 1968, I found that equally hard to comprehend. As a joint inter-party venture next time, we might try to set these matters out in a more easily understood way.
My next point is very important, and again it is in no sense a party point. It concerns the distribution formula. The report says that the right hon. Gentleman has considered this with the authorities and decided to make no change now. That is what we said two years ago, and I do not criticise him for that. But there is an aspect of the distribution formula that is becoming increasingly disturbing and that affects the centres of our large cities. We all know what is happening. Each year the better-off classes are tending to move out to the suburbs or even beyond. This causes for the inner boroughs a loss of rating revenue. Moreover, under the present formula, because they lose population, therefore their amount of Exchequer grant also goes down. So we have a position in which the boroughs that are poorest are also those with by far the most difficult social problems. Because of the loss of revenue, both rating and Exchequer grant revenue, they become, as we can see in instances we all know, desperately anxious to hang on to the whole of their remaining population.
The question is whether this exerts a dangerous pressure in the direction of what we have had in the past few years, high-rise building often inadequately planned and of an inadequate standard, certainly in terms of space, very often almost tenement blocks, as some of them are becoming. I wonder whether the pressure to build in this way, which we find more and more socially unsatisfactory, is not partly due to the distribution formula behind the rate support grant.

I think that in one or two cases we are beginning to see the difficulties which some of the great American cities have had. Increasingly we see in the inner neighbourhoods a lack of resources going with the greatest social problems, instead of the other way round. This is something we should debate between now and the next rate support grant Order.
I have one general comment about local government finance. Every year we have almost the same discussion, which goes roughly as follows. Rates are a horrible tax. They are very regressive, very unpopular and very inflexible, and generally a bad thing. The problem is especially acute, we point out to ourselves each year, because the demand in real terms for local authority services is constantly rising, and, on the other hand, as I suggested just now, it is exceptionally difficult for local authorities to increase their productivity because of the extent to which they are labour-intensive. Therefore, successive Governments—the last one generously; this one meanly and miserably—try to meet this problem of local government by increasing the percentage of local expenditure paid for out of general taxation. When we do that there is a terrible outcry in the local authority Press and other parts of the Press, with people saying that there is less and less discipline in respect of local spending because the local authorities do not have to answer for levying a large part of the revenue which they propose to spend. Therefore, it is said, the Government are tempted into more and more detailed supervision and this is bad for the independence of local authorities.
We should not get hysterical about this situation. Circular 2/70, following exactly the lines of our February White Paper, pointed out quite correctly that much of local expenditure is on
… key services for which Ministers have special responsibilities in determining standards or co-ordinating developments on a national basis.
I believe that that implies as a matter of logic a large element of national financing, since it is we in Parliament who are laying down these national standards.
On top of that, if we look ahead and consider particularly the urban problem that I discussed, the likelihood is of greater, not less, pressure for help from the central Government to particularly


hard-pressed local authorities. Moreover, even with 57 per cent. coming from the Exchequer it is perfectly possible, as Circular 2/70, following our White Paper, has recently shown, to relax detailed controls of local spending.
Let us by all means search for new methods of taxation; let us go on, as the Government are obviously doing, with the familiar arguments about local income tax, local sales taxes, and motor taxation, which is coming to the top of the popularity poll. I hope that the Government will also accept what we said in our White Paper about the ultra vires rule, so that the local authorities may indulge in profit-making enterprises if they wish. Let us do all this. Above all, let us seek to improve the rates. I think both Governments agreed that rates are likely to remain the principal local tax, as the Royal Commission pointed out. But let us concentrate on making rates more equitable and less regressive. I wish the Government good luck in their search, and we look forward to what the Green Paper says when it is published in the New Year. But I hope that we do not conduct this search in a mood of impending disaster or alternatively of expectation that we shall find in our search a marvellous simple panacea which at one stroke will solve the whole problem of local authority finance, because I do not believe that we shall do so.
But we should not be too distracted by these general questions of alternative local taxes. I want to return to the Order. It is unacceptable because it will mean both a curtailment of services and certainly the biggest rise in rates we have had for many years. It is unacceptable because it represents a straight transfer from the national taxpayer to the local ratepayer, and because it is part of a general Government policy of transferring resources from those less well off to those better off.
We shall not vote against it, because there is some increase in help, but the increase is both miserable in amount and inequitable in distribution.

6.8 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Jones: I am pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland), and I am also pleased that I can agree with

some of his speech. I hope that I shall be able to point out the error of his ways in other things that he said.
I intervened in the right hon. Gentleman's speech on the question of rates and revaluation after he had criticised the rating system for being regressive. Yet at the close of his speech the right hon. Gentleman was saying that there was really no alternative. Surely that strengthens the point that we need regular revaluations to distribute the collection of revenue from rates as equitably among ratepayers as possible? Clearly there is some common ground between us, but just to plead that, whilst the right hon. Gentleman's Government did not apply revaluation, neither did the previous Government, is rather a thin reply to my intervention.

Mr. Arthur Blenkinsop: Surely the hon. Gentleman will agree that the main problem for any Government is simply the practical matter of availability of trained valuers?

Mr. Jones: It may be, if a Government waste their time on schemes like the Land Commission.

Mr. Julius Silverman: Mr. Julius Silverman rose—

Mr. Jones: I will not give way because we have a limited time for the debate.
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the form of the Increase Order and the Order itself. It is very confusing, and I hope that it can be elaborated. The last time this matter was discussed the Government spokesman admitted that he did not understand certain comments in the Order.
I am in complete agreement with the right hon. Gentleman on the selectivity of assistance. I know all the complications of the rate support grant arrangements and the three categories under which they come, but we should be helping the great cities and giving greater weight to their problems.
The Rate Support Grant (Increase) Order, 1969, introduced by the Socialist Administration raised the estimates on the 1968 Order by £155 million for the last financial year and by £201 million for 1970–71. These were what the then Government in paragraph 5 of the 1969 Report called
unforeseen increases in costs since the 1968 Order.


Of these figures, 56 per cent. and 57 per cent., respectively, were financed by Exchequer grants; that is, a further £84 million in 1969–70 and £111 million for the current financial year, thus leaving the residue of £71 million and £90 million, respectively, to be borne by the ratepayers. The right hon. Gentleman said that our proposals are hostile to ratepayers, but the previous Government, because of their under-estimates, loaded the ratepayer with these substantial amounts.
That was not the end of the story. Since last year's Rate Support Grant (Increase) Order further escalation of costs has led yet again to a revision of the estimates, giving further increases of £13 million last year and the tremendously large sum of £243 million for the current year. This has led to another £6 million for last year and £114 million for the current year being borne by the ratepayer.
Although, as the right hon. Gentleman says, rates may escalate, this will be as a deliberate act of policy. In the past two years rates escalated more than on any previous occasion because of maladministration by the Labour Government and this is a complete negation of many points which the right hon. Gentleman made against the Order. The nature of the protection of the domestic ratepayer is thus revealed as nothing more than an attempt to soften the impact of disastrous economic policies leading to constant cost increases. I hesitate to challenge the right hon. Gentleman on this point, but I have gone carefully into that figure and I do not think that my figures are open to challenge. The previous Administration, by mis-assessment, misjudgment and by allowing the inflationary situation to continue hammered the ratepayer by the rate increase orders year by year.
A policy of sound economic management, coupled with a policy to bring local authority expenditure under a controlled rate of increase are the best forms of protection for the domestic ratepayer. The Government have inherited a frightening rate of inflation which arose from the 16 per cent. award to the refuse collectors in London in 1969. That was one of the great failures of the previous Administration's wage policy.
The most important document before us is the Report on the Rate Support Grant Order for the years 1971–72 and 1972–73, H.C. 172. The present Administration can have only minimum influence over the two previous years and the only course open to them is to find their share of resources to deal with the inherited inflationary situation. Paragraph 9 of the Report says:
Local authority expenditure represents a substantial part of total public expenditure but, more significantly, it accounts for over half of the growth.
I welcome the assurance of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that local government expenditure is to be brought under firmer control. To this end local authorities should be required to look for savings in improved efficiency and to pass work which does not have to be undertaken by public authorities to other authorities.
The target for relevant expenditure for 1971–72 is £3,795 million and for 1972–73, £3,970 million, a rate growth of 4·2 per cent. for the current year. The reduction of ½ per cent. in the annual growth rate which is to be permitted to local authorities is a fair one. The fundamental difference between the Government and the Opposition is the determination on the part of the Government to limit expenditure in the public sector which has to be met by ever-increasing taxation. The Government have asked local authorities specifically to consider improved efficiency, elimination of work which is unnecessary or could be undertaken by other bodies, greater use of management services and the L.A.M.S.A.C. facilities and the introduction and extension of a scheme of pooled purchasing arrangements and bulk purchasing.
The high standards of our local authority services have been built up on the excellence of the professional institutions. Our standard is higher than anywhere else in the world. But these professions are isolated. There is the clerk's department, the treasurer's department, education, welfare, estates, all in separate departments. As was recommended in the Maud Report, we should be working towards management discipline across the professions, and I welcome the recommendations which my right hon. Friend made on this. This will achieve a more effective use of resources, which is


a subject which the right hon. Member for Grimsby omitted from his speech. We need greater efficiency and greater discipline of management across the professions. To this end I welcome the introduction of an increased efficiency factor. This has been found to be useful in the farming industry and I am sure it will be equally useful in local government services. The saving of £10 million a year for 1971–72 and £25 million for the subsequent year is by no means unreasonable. I welcome this philosophy and realism in financial terms which lies behind this year's rate support grant order.

6.20 p.m.

Mr. Julius Silverman: I will not follow the hon. Member for Northants, South (Mr. Arthur Jones) except perhaps to comment on one or two of his observations. He referred to the efficiency cut. The efficiency cut has nothing to do with efficiency. The larger local authority which is already efficient, which uses L.A.M.S.A.C. and which uses bulk purchasing methods get the same cut as the inefficient authority. What has this to do with efficiency?
This is a mean little cut introduced by the present Government in respect of local authorities after the completion of negotiations. The Municipal Journal has commented on this matter as follows:
One wonders how relevant reductions of this sort are, or whether they should not be made more a justification for central Government to appear to be chastising local government.
The cut has nothing to do with efficiency since it affects the efficient and inefficient alike, and the £10 million and £25 million are distributed throughout the whole of the local authorities.
I read the speech that was made by the hon. Member for Northants, South during the debate on the last Order. It was entirely different in tone from the one he made today. One would almost imagine that a lesser burden was being imposed on the local authorities this year than last. He mentioned how much the local authorities would have to pay. I think he said that after the increase Order was made the local authority would have to pay £65 million—was that the figure?

Mr. Arthur Jones: No. The figure was £114 million.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Hon. Members must address each other through the Chair.

Mr. Silverman: This time they will have to pay at least that much. It is contemplated in most places that there will be an increase in rates of anywhere between 2s. and 2s. 6d. in the £ in almost all local authorities and in some an even greater amount as a result of this order.
I noticed during the last debate to which I referred that the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) made certain zoological references. He then said:
The Government were in one of their craziest moods when they devised this procedure in 1966.
I think that the present Government are adopting the same procedure, except that they are cutting down on the domestic element and making other cuts. The hon. Gentleman went on:
The great bulk of local government expenditure plods relentlessly, rather like a huge elephant, and periodically the Minister mounts it waving an increase order, but facing the tail of the elephant instead of the trunk, and looking at what has been trampled by this elephant in the past rather than what is likely in future." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th December, 1969; Vol. 793, c. 1069.]
I do not know on what side of the elephant the hon. Gentleman is sitting today, or whether he is waving his increase Order at the tail or at the trunk, but the net consequence is that when both the 1970 Order and the increase Order are put into effect the ratepayer will be so much the poorer.
It is all very well to talk about economy, but there is not that much scope for economy for local authorities. They, of course, have certain tasks in regard to education and in providing increasing numbers of teachers to deal with large classes. Local authorities will have to continue to incur such expenditure since education is the main spender. Nor can there be any economy on the police force or in public health. Once we get into the area of cuts by local authorities they are not carried out through major economies but in cheese-paring ways which save a penny or two-pence on the rates and inflict hardship and lose amenities for the community totally out of proportion to what is saved. The sort of economies we see are cuts in night classes, adult education, by saving a certain amount of lighting


here with danger to the population, by leaving a road in disrepair there with similar dangers. These are the odds and ends, the "small change", of public expenditure where cuts inflict hardship quite out of relationship to any benefit which they bestow on the ratepayer. These cuts will only be intensified by this Order.
We are discussing today not so much the matter of public expenditure, but the matter of who is to pay. My right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) said that local authority taxation is regressive. It may not be possible for many years to come to find a practical alternative, but in the meantime certain measures can be taken to make them less regressive. The Minister has mentioned a most important matter, the domestic element. We are very sorry that this has been cut. There will be hardship not only on the ratepayers as a whole, but a relatively greater hardship on the domestic ratepayer who will now have to pay a greater proportion than he otherwise would have borne.
Other things can be done to relieve the regressive nature of the rates, one of which is the rebate scheme. I know that this Order does not deal with that matter and that I should be out of order if I were to pursue it at length. If we want to deal with the regressive nature of the rates, I feel that an extension of the rebates order is now necessary to increase the level at which people can get rebates. I am sure that in saying that I have the support of many hon. Members in all parts of the House.
This measure will bring hardship to many ratepapers, and particularly to the poor ratepayers. This comes at a time when the Government propose a reduction of sixpence in the income tax. I suggest that some of that money might much more suitably have been applied in reducing the burden borne by ratepayers, many of whom will get little benefit from income tax reductions but will find their burdens increasing, at the same time as the wealthier income taxpayer and high surtax payers will benefit from the next Budget.
The hon. Member for Northants, South also mentioned revaluation, which I do not see securing any benefit for the

ratepayer. It may redistribute the burden sometimes one way, and sometimes another. Certainly the last revaluation made very little difference in redistribution. In some local authorities, such as Birmingham, the domestic hereditament benefited, but for many it went the other way and imposed an additional burden on the domestic ratepayer. Therefore, this is no solution to the problem. The only assistance which can now be given is by the Exchequer.
A major part of the Order relates to the increase in labour costs and wages. Whilst we may deplore inflationary wage claims and increases in wages for general economic reasons, there is no doubt that the Government are the beneficiary. They probably derive benefit from excise duty, purchase tax, and the rest, on goods consumed by people with higher incomes which is more in proportion than the amount of the increase in wages.
But what happens? Consider, for instance, local authority wage increases. The Government get the benefit from increased taxation; the local authority gets nothing. The local authority pays out and the Government get the benefit. I should think that this is an added reason for a greater amount of Exchequer assistance to relieve the burden on the rates generally and particularly on the domestic ratepayer. I consider the Order inadequate, because there remains an immense burden which, during the next financial year, will certainly be resented by the poorer ratepayers throughout the country.

6.32 p.m.

Mr. Martin Maddan: The hon. Member for Birmingham, Aston (Mr. Julius Silverman) couched his criticisms of the Orders at least in moderate terms. The hon. Gentleman did not fly off into areas of greater contention, as did his right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland).

Mr. Julius Silverman: I did not wish to emulate the terms in which hon. Gentlemen opposite couched their speeches a year or two years ago. They were quite extravagant and ridiculous.

Mr. Maddan: I am sorry to be rebuked for congratulating the hon. Gentleman on his moderation.

Mr. Silverman: Withdraw.

Mr. Maddan: I do not withdraw. I will allow the hon. Gentleman to interrupt me later, if he wishes, to accuse me of lack of the moderation of which, no doubt, he will assume that I was guilty before.
In considering these Orders we must start from the economic position in which the country as a whole finds itself—that is one way of putting it—or, as I prefer to put it, in which every person finds himself as a result of the policies of the previous Government which led, during the last 12 months of their term of office, to the galloping inflation from which we are now suffering—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman does not seem to agree. But I do not see how anybody could disagree that we have inherited a situation of galloping inflation as a result of the policies—or the failure of the policies —of the previous Government.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must not widen the debate. He can, however, make a remark en passant.

Mr. Maddan: I will not tempt the hon. Gentleman to draw me further. I will continue on the Order.
The position in which we find ourselves is one which requires local authorities to be encouraged to economise. If it is merely a few candle ends, that is not to be despised. I expect that most hon. Members have had to economise from time to time in either a public or private capacity. Useful total savings are usually achieved by adding together a lot of candle ends.

Mr. Gerald Kaufman: The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, which one can accept without any party political undertones, about difficult economic circumstances. He says, or implies, that because of these it is necessary for local authorities to rein back their expenditure and that this is the Government's policy. But how can the hon. Gentleman reconcile that, which is a logical policy on its own, with the Government handing out more than £300 million in income tax reductions at a time when there is a necessity—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We must not widen the debate too far.

Mr. Maddan: I shall not follow the hon. Gentleman, except to say that

expenditure is one thing; taxation is another.
We must encourage economies in expenditure. We must not despise them because they are small. Small economies made over a wide area can add up to a substantial total. That is where we start.
No pressure operates so effectively upon local authorities to economise as the feelings of the ratepayers. If the result of the Order is to shift the balance towards the ratepayer from the central Government, that may be no bad thing in increasing the sense of reality in the local authority finance committees and debating chambers.
I should like to contradict the right hon. Member for Grimsby on the line which he took, entirely contrary to that of his right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), now the editor of the New Statesman, who deplored rates as a hopeless tax and wanted to see them ended. I thought that the right hon. Member for Grimsby rather praised rates and was satisfied to leave the situation very much as it is.
That is not my position. I think that the rating system has many weaknesses. It is carrying a burden which it is not really effectively and fairly able to bear. So I look forward with lively anticipation—not that it will be a sudden salvation from all our problems—to the Green Paper in the hope that from it and the discussions on it new sources of finance for local government may be found.
That is relevant to the Order because we are now, in my opinion, at the beginning of a transitional period. We must look upon what we are doing in the rating sphere as the beginning of a transitional period. We must not do too much calculating and extrapolating what is being done today to 1975 or 1978, because I hope that substantial changes will be made in local government finance before that time.
The right hon. Member for Grimsby said that local authorities have to carry out what are, in effect, services to national standards laid down by Parliament and that, therefore, it is for the central Government taxpayer to finance them. The right hon. Gentleman implied that that was a proper system. I entirely disagree.
Parliament lays down all kinds of standards. About 10 years ago Parliament laid down standards for heating, lighting, and so on, for office accommodation. Parliament did not say that the taxpayer would pay for commercial firms to bring their offices up to those standards. Of course not. We lay down standards, but that does not mean that we have an automatic necessity to finance the implementation of those standards.
I strongly believe in the need for determined, independent, efficient and strong local government. I believe that that will not be maintained for long when the rate grant support from the central Government reaches into the more than 60 per cent. bracket, which it will shortly do on present trends. I believe that such a situation will eat into the independence and, therefore, the effectiveness of local government. In so far as the Orders slow down that trend, they are to be welcomed. They do not reduce the domestic element but increase it, but not as fast as has been done in the past. In so far as that is so and it brings into sharper focus the responsibilities of local authorities to their ratepayers, that again must be welcomed.
We must consider these Orders in the context of many changes in local government, its structure and finance, which will come before many years have passed and which will be known and decided within the two years covered by the Orders. In that context, and in the context of the national economic situation we have inherited, I do not hesitate to support these Orders—indeed, I give them extravagant support if that is what the hon. Gentleman wishes to hear from me.
I end with a small local point in connection with the county of East Sussex, which contains my constituency. I do so to underline the points I have made. In terms of grant per head of population, East Sussex gets the lowest of all the counties of England and Wales, so I am not arguing from the point of where my county of East Sussex is treated extra favourably. The fact that East Sussex has the lowest grant per head of any administrative county results from the formula in relation to education units, and no doubt discussions between the county and the Ministry will continue on that point.
Nevertheless, having said that, my judgment of the Orders is that they will help in the creation of economies and in the generation of responsibility in local authorities, and that they will prove consistent with the trends we want to encourage and bring about in the reform of local government which we shall be considering before too long.

6.42 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Blenkinsop: I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Maddan) in that he is right in saying that the Orders shift some of the burden from the centre to the local ratepayers. That is precisely what my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) pointed out. What the hon. Gentleman did not go on to say—I will say it for him, and I hope I have his full approval—is that this in itself is a highly inflationary action. What could be more inflationary at this time than to cause, and openly to cause, one of the heaviest increases in rate burden that we have faced for some years? I do not think that that fact can be challenged. This, taken together with the considerable rent increases we have been promised, is bound to inflate demands for wage increases in order to cover the inevitably increased costs involved to the great bulk of the ordinary workers.
I have not had any rebuttal on this matter from the hon. Gentleman, so I assume that he must accept this situation. I find this quite extraordinary. He pointed out that we were in an inflationary situation. It is at least agreed on this side of the House that almost every action the Government have taken so far has fed the fires of inflation and made it infinitely worse. This is another example. These Orders are bound to be further inflationary in their effect.
Quite often, there is a certain unreality about these debates because we talk of global figures, rarely being able to bring them down to local terms. But I want to quote the example of my own constituency by relating what was said by the chairman of the finance committee of South Shields Council. I may add that he is a supporter of the present Government, since South Shields is not a Labour-controlled authority. He says:
The future is indeed very black and we must exercise stricter control than ever in


the past … and … expunge some of the figures … We are now on the slippery slope. There is no ray of hope for the foreseeable future.
Those warnings are only too likely to be accurate and they confirm my view that the whole effect of the Orders is severely inflationary. An hon. Member opposite welcomed the Orders because, he said, they would encourage local authorities to hive off—that is the fashionable phrase nowadays—some of their activities to other bodies. I want to put the facts which a local authority has to face.
The North-East is an area where it is urgently important to provide fresh employment and fresh facilities for new employment through the provision of sites for new industries. As long as the support and grants given by the last Government persist, there remain opportunities for industries to come into the area, although those opportunities are being rapidly taken away by the present Government.
But these prospective industries have to have adequate sites for development, and this is essentially and inevitably the responsibility of central and local government. The whole problem of the clearance of derelict sites and the development of new sites, by reclamation from the river and from old industrial sites, is for the local authority to tackle and it wants to accept its responsibilities. I give it great credit for wanting to do so. But heavy expenditure is involved, even with the support that the central Government have been able to offer in the past and which we hope and pray may continue for some short while yet. But that we do not know, although we have heard many threats.
Who else is going to do this job, involving, as it does, all kinds of expenditure in trying to provide new industrial sites? No one else will do it. We have to rely on ourselves, and that is what my local authority wants to do. It accepts that it has a local responsibility, with support from the central Government. It does not want to hive off this problem and, indeed, there is no one to hive it off to. We are involved at the moment in very heavy expenditure on a joint project with other authorities for a major new incinerator linked with the redevelopment of an important area of land. Can anybody suggest to me that that is a project

which can be hived off and undertaken by somebody else? Of course it cannot. Another major project which has been urgently needed for many years is the cleaning of the River Tyne, for which there has come a gradual acceptance. It could bring great benefits, both in terms of the living standards and recreational facilities of people in the neighbourhood and prospects of bringing in new employment. Is that a project which can be hived off to someone else? Of course it is not. The only people who will carry it out are central and local government combined. Indeed, it is unlikely that there will be much contribution from central government in that case. I like to believe that there might be, but a large proportion of this great expenditure is bound to fall upon the local authority.
These are the realities one has to face. We are bound to be involved in great educational expenditure. We have the heritage of bad, old buildings for schools and hospitals, health service centres and so on. We want to change all these because we know that it is essential in providing a new appearance for the whole area. We are eager to tackle the job. To whom can that be hived off? Other than the local authorities, who on earth will undertake it? No one will. The only projects that no doubt could be hived off are those which might possibly bring a profit, and those are precisely the things on which I want some assurance that the Government will encourage local authorities to retain. This is the hope for our local community. We have these empty, windy words from the other side of the Chamber and when one analyses the words they mean nothing when considering the conditions of the kind of area for which I speak
The likely effect of these Orders in an area like that which I represent is bound to be inflationary. I have quoted what the chairman of the finance committee said about it. The treasurer's estimate and that of others who have done their best to work out what the effect is likely to be, is that we are almost bound to be involved in a rate increase of half a crown in the £ in an area like ours, without tackling any new developments which we wish to carry out. The treasurer is assuming that there may well


be an increase of about 20 per cent. in revenue expenditure over 1970–71. Whatever the local authority does in trying to hold things back to some extent, it will still have this kind of increase. We did not hear this kind of reality from the right hon. Gentleman who opened the debate. I felt that we were in a sort of cloud-cuckoo-land while the Minister was speaking, because what he said seemed not to relate to the situation as we see it in our areas.
The Order states:
Nothing is included for possible future increases but in the event of an unforeseen increase taking place in the level of prices, costs and remuneration which has a substantial effect on the relevant expenditure of local authorities, the Secretary of State may by order increase the amounts of the rate support grants.
We appreciate that this is a fairly common form which statements come in. I ask for one modest assurance that there will be no delay in introducing what almost inevitably will need to be an increase order and that it will be done well before December of next year. We can already see that we shall be bound to face increases which will have to be paid by the local authority in April or thereabouts of next year, and they will have to meet that out of their own revenues. Therefore, we should have some assurance from the Minister when he replies that there will be an effort to meet this need quickly because of the very difficult circumstances with which we are all faced?
The serious point we must all face is the danger of the inflationary movements. In heaven's name, why should we add further to the inflationary forces? Why should we, in these Orders, be doing our best, in effect, to make matters worse and not better? I ask the Minister to pay some attention to this matter which is not one merely coming from those of us who have every party political reason to see evil motives in such Orders but from his own supporters, such of them as there are—there do not seem to be many at the moment.
There were some who were regular spokesmen on this subject in past debates. I particularly remember the vigour and determination of the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) who used to appear in the House, whatever the time

of day or night, to castigate the previous Government and to demand further increases in the domestic element in particular, of the rate support grants. Where is he today? Gone, alas, are these voices which used to be so much concerned.
I therefore appeal very strongly to the Minister to see what further assurance he can give to authorities like those which we represent. Those authorities are committed properly and rightly to essential expenditure which cannot be met without an unfair addition to the rate burden, in the terms of the Orders he is now presenting.

6.58 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: Local authorities will be extremely cynical about the speech we heard this afternoon from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland). As someone who has been in local government for 21 years, I should describe it as crocodile tears and a complete reverse from everything that was said from the Dispatch Box when his party was in power. I, of course, was not here then, but having read the debates then with great care, I do not believe that there was much substance in what he had to say today. The Orders clearly encourage the extra expenditure needed on health, welfare, and education services, and the basic programmes which our local authority associations have put forward have been substantially met.
It is right to remind the House that the right hon. Member for Grimsby was far from accurate in many of his statements. It was not, as he said, in one year that the local authorities lost out on relevant expenditure but in fact in two years, in 1967–68 and 1968–69, when they lost £73 million, and not the figures mentioned by the right hon. Member for Grimsby. But in percentage terms 52·8 per cent. instead of 54 per cent. and 53·5 per cent. instead of 55 per cent. represent cuts of 1·2 and 1·5 per cent., which are more than double the reduction which my right hon. Friend has offered this year of a growth in this percentage of half of 1 per cent. Let us be clear that the right hon. Gentleman had not got his facts right.
He went on to say that, in the coming year, we were likely to face the biggest


rate rise experienced for many years. That is true. But one of the clear reasons for it which most ratepayers understand is that the cost of money is very high and that local authorities have been forced to borrow at exceedingly high rates due to the actions of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite when they were in office. The hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) said that the Government were feeding the fires of inflation. Let me remind the hon. Gentleman that at least we have had a clear admission of who started the original act of arson. Right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite began all the trouble when they were in power, and it is interesting to see how they are now all too anxious to magnify the estimated rises in rates.
As a former leader of the fourth wealthiest local authority in England in terms of rateable resources and as one who took over from an extremely spendthrift Labour-controlled council, I know that it is impossible to stop overnight a process which has been put in train by three or four years of Labour administration. It is virtually impossible to halt rising rates overnight when one's capital programmes are committed so far ahead and one has to borrow money at the sort of rates that we were offered under the last Administration. It cannot be done overnight. It cannot be done even in 12 months.

Mr. Ray Carter: At a stroke !

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: That is getting to be quoted so much out of context that it is not worthy of comment.
It was also interesting to hear the quotation by the right hon. Member for Grimsby from the Municipal Review. Clearly it suited him on this occasion. He would not have quoted from that journal two years ago, because it made many scathing remarks about the deceit practised by his Government on the local authority associations.
I come now to my observations on the Order, and I begin by paying tribute to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for his very lucid explanation and the highly competent manner in which he conducted the formal R.S.C. negotiations. I was one of the local authority representatives round that table, and in my view it would be difficult to find any-

one other than my right hon. Friend who could have mastered such a difficult brief in so short a time. Local government is fortunate to have a Minister at its head who has such a grasp of the real essentials.
I hope that my right hon. Friend will persuade his colleagues not to follow the example of the previous Administration whereby his Department issued Circulars instructing local authorities not to spend any more money, and other Ministers issued circulars exhorting local authorities to spend on more services, without willing the means. That is the important point. Exhortation by other Departments is all very well provided that they are prepared to shell out when the time comes and provide the necessary cash to carry out their programmes. If they do not, they are being quite unfair and merely indulging in propaganda exercises for their Departments, since the rate payers will have to foot the bill without help from them.
The first point that I wish to make on the Order concerns the difficult administrative problems that will be caused to local authorities by the decision to increase the domestic element by 2.8 old pence, bringing it to a total of 9½p in 1971–72, and by 2.4 old pence or 1p, making a total of 10p in 1972–73, instead of expressing these sums in whole new pence terms from the start. In view of the difficult accounting problems of local authorities which use computers to levy a rate in two half-yearly equal instalments, it would have been much more helpful and more in keeping with the modern image of efficiency which local government has if these items could have been expressed in whole new pence and if the domestic element could have been a total of 10p in 1971–72, 11p in 1972–73, and so on.
My second point relates to the decision to reduce the forecast totals for the two years by a total of £35 million, with no reason given other than on the ground of improved efficiency on the part of local authorities. That clearly penalises local authorities which are efficient, which have already spent considerable sums on management consultants and putting in new schemes, and which have supported such orgaisations as L.A.M.S.A.C. Although I do not give unqualified support to that organisation since, in my


view, it is going outside its proper work and starting to arrange seminars and conferences, impinging on the operations of far better organisations such as the R.I.P.A., I hope that L.A.M.S.A.C. will confine itself to computers and management consultancy and not start going into matters which are far better covered by the Industrial Society and R.I.P.A.
It will be difficult for local authorities to find the extra savings called for by this £10 million and £25 million.
As one who was engaged in the final formal negotiations, I pay tribute to the officials of the Ministries and local authorities who conducted the detailed negotiations over many months in such harmony and with such useful results.
In the detailed meetings at official level, the process of working out the trend covered items such as central purchasing. But that is nothing new to local government. All the matters had already been covered, and it is perhaps a pity that my right hon. Friend has decided to ask for them a second time. Either it is a case of my right hon. Friend having his cake and eating it, or of having his cake and taking one of our slices as well. If the Secretary of State was not my right hon. Friend but the right hon. Member for Grimsby, one might legitimately suspect on excellent past precedents that the cuts amounting to £35 million were based upon nothing other than the Minister's desire, having looked at the totality, to have a bit more of the total share of the local authority cake. It is a pity that this has been found necessary. It smacks too much of the cold hand of the Treasury creeping in at the last minute.
My hon. Friend the Member for Northants, South (Mr. Arthur Jones) spoke of the separate teams in local government—the town clerks, the housing managers, the welfare officers, now superseded by directors of social service, and the like. He asked for management disciplines much along the lines of the first Maud Report. It is not much encouragement to those efficient, progressive local authorities who carried out this process a year or two ago to be exhorted by this £35 million efficiency cut to try to do it now to help bring down the overall costs of local government.
In recent times there has been much greater and better co-operation between Ministry officials and local government officials than was ever experienced during the five years when the Labour Party was the Government, so let hon. Gentlemen opposite not be happy about what is being said. Hon. Gentlemen opposite were deceitful when they were in power. They put over a story which could not be substantiated. At least my right hon. Friend has been open from the start, which is what hon. Gentlemen opposite were not, so let them get no comfort from what I am saying. There is no comfort for them either, in the expressions of views by representatives of local authorities all over the country. It is sad that this rather small sum should remain between the local authorities and the Government. I hope that the Minister will think again on the next occasion about whether some of this efficiency cut ought to be restored.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Maddan) said he was "getting unhappy that the percentage grant of relevant expenditure was getting near 60 per cent.". He thought that this would not be a good thing for local government. I think that my hon. Friend is completely wrong about this. I do not think that any particular percentage means a loss of independence for local government. If the spirit of local government is there, if co-operation between central Government and local government is there, the percentage is immaterial.
At a recent International Union of Local Authorities Conference, an excellent paper was presented by Dr. Marshall, the former Treasurer of Coventry. It showed conclusively that in many countries local authorities receive payments from their national exchequers far in excess of the 60 per cent. about which my hon. Friend was talking. I do not believe that there is any magic figure above which local government will lose its independence.
Speaking as the Deputy Chairman of the Association of Municipal Corporations, I can say to the right hon. Member for Grimsby and his hon. Friends that the total finally emerging from the negotiations is not regarded as inadequate for the expenditure that is likely to be necessary on continuing and developing the


various services which were accepted by the Government and by local authorities. I believe that there are two things that need to be done before the next Rate Support Order comes before the House. First, there must be an examination of the Green Paper, which I hope will throw up some new ideas. It is pretty clear that there is unlikely to be any method of financing local government other than by the rating system, but there are other ideas which I should support. One is to have a local lottery, which would be an element in the Order, because one could then say that a particular figure could be reduced slightly. Another idea is to provide a certain amount from local commercial radio.
I do not accept the argument put forward by previous Governments that because of a shortage of qualified staff it was not possible to proceed with revaluation. I remind the House that at the first major revaluation after the war, when valuation was filched from local authorities—the first of the acts to lessen local authority responsibility by the Socialist Administration of 1945 to 1950—to get an early revaluation district valuers called in outside firms of surveyors and valuers. Having been on a valuation court, I know that the work done by the outside surveyors was extremely good, and well up to the standard of the district valuer. There is therefore no reason why the previous Government should have funked the issue of revaluation.
I am grateful to the Minister for the way in which he put his arguments to the House but, like the right hon. Member for Grimsby, I believe that the layout of the document leaves much to be desired. Apart from those hon. Members in the Chamber now who are fascinated by the esoteric subject of local government finance, few people outside will get past even the first page, not even with the 12½p on the front as the alternative price. I hope that a method can be found of putting the Order into better language.
I conclude with an apology to the House. I have a long-standing engagement at 7.30 with a professional association. I fear, therefore, that I may not be here to hear the whole of the debate, but I hope I have made my points as succinctly as possible.

7.16 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Probert: I shall not follow the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg), because if I do I shall find myself wandering into realms with which I do not want to deal, but I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that it would have a salutary effect on his thinking if he were to read what was said by his right hon. Friends on this subject when they were on this side of the House.
I find myself in some disagreement with my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) and the Minister in their oblique references to Circular 2/70. From 1st April next year this circular will have an effect on the rate support grant, which in turn will have an effect upon rating generally.
I believe that this innovation will seriously curtail local authority projects such as those to which my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) referred—land clearance schemes, and so on. Apart from that I think that there will be a greater increase in rates than there has been for many years, solely as a result of the Government's policy. I think, too, that the rate support grant itself will be under-estimated.
On 27th November the Prime Minister made a speech at Manchester, and The Times of 28th November reported him as saying:
At the same time we propose more extensive assistance towards the cost of improving basic services and clearing dereliction in the development areas.
I have no doubt that the Prime Minister was sincere in expressing that view. His right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services did some fantastic work when he was Minister of Housing in a previous Tory Administration in attempting to persuade local authorities to go ahead with derelict land schemes. He did all he could to encourage them in this matter and gave grants of up to 75 per cent. or 80 per cent.
I am sure that both he and the Prime Minister are sincere. Local authorities were very lethargic about this. They seemed to do nothing, despite the generous grants. It was the unfortunate episode at Aberfan that acted as a spur to them, and encouraged schemes for the clearance of derelict land to go ahead in many parts of the North-East and


South Wales. I feel that the Prime Minister is not fully aware how the new procedures which will come into effect from 1st April next year will affect derelict land schemes of local authorities. I intend to write to him personally on the matter.
From next April derelict land schemes will not be included in the key sectors; they will come under locally-determined schemes. The Rate Support Grant Order provides for the expenditure of £1 million and £1·1 million on open space, derelict land and clean air in 1972–73. I suggest that this is in no way sufficient to cope with the schemes that are already planned in South Wales and, no doubt, the North-East and elsewhere. When these schemes are taken out of the key sector local authorities will be inhibited. I suggest that one way out would be to deal with the matter on a regional basis. In cases where local authorities have severe problems the Government should see that the schemes for derelict land are covered by the locally-determined schemes and placed in the key sector.
But there is a far more serious effect, and I am afraid that many of my right hon. and hon. Friends, and hon. Members opposite, have not realised it. The circular to which I have referred states that:
All capital payments made during the year on locally determined schemes (including any part financed from Government grants) will count against the allocation.
The effect of this will be quite dramatic. Urban districts and non-county boroughs will have to charge to their annually locally-determined schemes allocations the gross cost of those schemes. This means that they will come nowhere near the total expenditure that would be incurred. I hope that my right hon. Friend—who will soon be sitting on the other side of the House—will realise this deficiency in Circular 2/70. I appeal to the Minister of State who, as everybody would agree, has greater knowledge of the matter than any of his hon. and right hon. Friends—

Mr. Crosland: I must claim slightly greater credit for the Labour Government for the level of grants in respect of the clearance of derelict land than my hon. Friend has done. Is it not the case that special grants in almost every case have

been made under a succession of Distribution of Industry Acts? They would not be affected by Circular 2/70.

Mr. Probert: I do not accept that. Circular 2/70 is clear. Derelict land is included in the schemes for which urban districts and non-county boroughs will have freedom to operate and the gross expenditure on those schemes will be charged against their annual allocation from the county areas concerned. I shall be glad if I am proved to be wrong about that, but I should like the position clarified.
In accordance with the Prime Minister's intentions and the intentions of my own party when in Government, local authorities have already been persuaded to embark on these schemes. I would have thought that they would therefore be placed in a very difficult situation. Circular 2/70 is a civil servant's circular. Civil servants would say, "It is a matter for local authorities. The local authorities must decide their priorities". After a closer examination I am sure that the Prime Minister and the right hon. Gentleman would not accept such a facile answer.
The Government naturally want to control the global expenditure of local government. The new arrangement is considered to be a way of doing this. But all grant-aid schemes will remain under the direct control of the Government. If what I suggest came about the Government would still have direct control. They would have to approve the derelict land schemes that were proposed.
There are two ways of remedying the situation. Derelict land schemes can be placed in the key sector. I think that that is the better solution. Alternatively, the net cost of the approved schemes only could be charged to the allocation to urban districts or non-county boroughs from county councils. In both cases the Government could discriminate in the case of development areas or areas where derelict land is a serious problem, so avoiding a blanket acceptance of my suggestions.
There are many aspects of the new financial scheme which take effect from 1st April. I conclude by touching upon only one. Everybody who has any experience of local government will appreciate that towards the end of the


financial year the money in the kitty should be spent quickly. The new set-up may have a serious effect in defining what the rate support grant must be. We shall have a rate support grant increase order next year, and fantastic problems will arise if we are not careful. It will mean that towards the end of the financial year non-county boroughs and urban districts will have to go cap in hand to their big brother, the county council, to see what they can get out of the pool. My hon. Friends have not been aware of what is in the circular. Even more ignominious and more frustrating—local authorities will be quarrelling with each other as to who shall have what out of the county council pool. This is a fantastic way to deal with the matter.
At one time we had what was called a rate equalisation grant which the rate support grant has to some extent supplanted. The former grant was allocated in the first place to county councils and they dished it out to the various urban districts, similar to what is now to happen on a larger scale. Things almost broke down and then we got the Jenkins Report, which proposed that the matter be dealt with via urban districts and non-county boroughs. This remedied the difficulty overnight. Unfortunately, the new system will take us back in time, and I hope that because of these serious defects the new set-up will be reviewed by the Government.
What will be the position of housing schemes for urban districts and non-county boroughs? If they want to produce a cycle of, say, 300 houses, I understand that the money required for the house erection aspect will come out of the key sector, though the ancillary services such as street lighting, heating, sewerage and so on will be allocated in gross from the annual allocation of the local authority, urban district or non-county borough within the county district. This will put this type of allocation beyond the means of such authorities—and this for essential services. This inadequacy needs further consideration.
I have tried not to be partisan tonight. I appreciate the sympathy which the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Social Services have in this matter. I feel emboldened to ask the Prime Minister to see whether the question of derelict land can be placed in the key

sector, certainly for areas with special problems. I have particularly in mind areas like South Wales and the North-East. They will be grateful to the end of their days for the sort of sympathetic act for which I have asked.

7.33 p.m.

Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine: I regret that the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) is no longer in his place. He claimed that the speeches made by my hon. Friends bore no relation to the problems he was facing in his constituency. He might have found the same fault in the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare (Mr. Probert), since the problems of derelict land do not apply any more in South Shields than they do in the attractive part of East Sussex which I represent.
The right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) seemed to think that there was some great merit in claiming that some of my hon. Friends should read the speeches which we made two years ago. I cannot recall whether I had the privilege of catching your eye in that debate, Mr. Speaker, but certainly on the occasions when I have addressed the House on the subject of rates in recent years the case I have put has not varied. What I hope will vary is that tonight I will receive a more satisfactory answer, because we now have a Minister who is well versed in these problems about which I have spoken, and on which I must comment again tonight.
I have previously told hon. Members that the constituency which I have the honour to represent has at least as high a percentage, if not the highest of any constituency in the country, of retired people living on fixed incomes. That means that many of my constituents are gravely concerned about the incidence of inflation. I need hardly remind hon. Gentlemen opposite that at the time of the General Election this matter was uppermost in their minds. Inflation was worrying them gravely then, and it is worrying them now.
They are worried, too, about the amount of rates that they must pay. I frequently come across examples of people who retired on what they thought was an adequate income, but after a few years in retirement they are finding that not only is inflation making life difficult for them but that increases in rates are in some cases making it impossible for them


to continue to live in the houses which they thought would be suitable for them for the rest of their lives.
When the hon. Member for South Shields said that there were "slight differences" in the problems which were exercising our minds, I thought how right he was. For example, he wanted to know what would happen to the local authority in his constituency which was busy arranging for new industries to be developed. In my constituency we have virtually no industry. Such industry as we have is largely concerned with services, and they were not encouraged by the last Government.
This means that there are no places in which people in my constituency can go to get an additional slice of the cake which increases in size for those who are geared to the industrial life of the nation. Even those who work in industry in my area are receiving wages well below the national average for similar industries. I therefore ask the Minister to comment on the problems of those living on fixed incomes and particularly worried not only about inflation but about rates increases. His remarks will be eagerly awaited by the people I have the privilege to represent.
I come to the wider picture of how rates affect East Sussex. My hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Maddan) referred to this problem. My county treasurer has worked out some figures, and I will give a short summary of the results at which he has arrived. When one looks at the amount collected in rates East Sussex, one sees that we come fifth in the league table of 58 counties in terms of the amounts collected per head of the population. By collecting £35·67 per head of the population, we come fifth.
On the question of grants, we are at the bottom of the league table, No. 58. We get £32·65d. per head. When the two are put together, we come No. 53 out of 58 in the league table, with a total of £68·32 per head as the total of rates plus grants. I may have been wrong, but I thought I heard the hon. Member for Aberdare refer to Brecon.

Mr. Probert: Mr. Probert indicated dissent.

Mr. Godman Irvine: In any event Brecon comes No. 54 in the list. It

charges £21·23 per head of the population as against £35·67 in East Sussex. In rate grants Brecon gets £73·44d. as against our £32·65d., which puts Brecon fifth in the table for grants. It ends up by being fifth overall, with the addition of rates, with £94·65 per head of the population to spend as against £68·32 in East Sussex.
My county treasurer expresses grave anxiety about the way in which the educational unit will be weighted in future. He calculates that it will be a sum in excess of £300,000 which East Sussex will be losing. I hope that the Minister will pay attention to the position of my constituency and give careful consideration to the points I have put forward on behalf of my county.
I commiserate with my right hon. Friend on his having to open various sewerage plants. I, too, have seen some of these plants, and I agree that some of them do not look very different from some of the older ones. But there is one ray of hope. I commend to him some of the plants to be seen in places like Denmark and Switzerland, which successfully recover a great deal of the material which is collected in refuse, put the remainder into a drum, add the remaining sewage to it, and produce a compost which is sold largely to local authorities. The result makes a very considerable financial contribution to the local authority resources. These plants are much more attractive places, and it would do my right hon. Friend no harm to pay them a visit and see whether such a system might not be of benefit here.

7.40 p.m.

Mrs. Doris Fisher: When discussing the Order we need to take into consideration the fact that the domestic relief given is being given in a year in which local authorities are facing very severe financial problems and rates will be rising substantially regardless of what is laid down in the Order. I should like to emphasise some of the things which will be applicable to a city such as Birmingham, which is perhaps our largest local authority and may well bear one of the largest burdens.
The effect of the domestic element of the rate support grant is, as a rough estimate, that it will cost the city's domestic ratepayers £196,000 in the first year and


practically £250,000 in the year following. That, with the efficiency cut of £200,000 proposed for 1971–72 will result in a rate increase of about 2½d. being placed on Birmingham householders by the Tory Government, regardless of any cuts or financial savings which the city may itself make.
The Order speaks of a saving of £10 million from increased efficiency, and that saving has to be borne pro rata by all local authorities. Birmingham, being the largest local authority, is responsible for one-fiftieth of that amount, so the result is that we are penalising efficient local authorities. For many years I have been a member of the Birmingham City Council and have prided myself on ours being an efficient local authority. I am sorry that the Secretary of State has just left the Chamber, because he would probably agree with me that the chairman of the City Council, not a member of my party, is not a very efficient chairman of the finance committee.
Birmingham has had its management consultant teams at work. It has had its organisations and methods survey. It has increased its productivity bonus schemes to its manual workers in order to get increased efficiency. We have had bulk purchase for many years. We have co-ordination of departments and services. That being so, where can a local authority which prides itself on being efficient save the amount asked for in the Order? The reduction for increased efficiency means that in the first year Birmingham is being penalised to the extent of £200,000 for being efficient, and to the tune of £250,000 in the following year. A loss of such magnitude to a city which prides itself on being a good local authority can be made up only by increasing the domestic householders' rates or lowering the services provided.
When looking at efficiency we must also look at the direction in which cuts can be made. I listened with interest to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Aston (Mr. Julius Silverman), and I, too, would like to know where we can make cuts. No less than 17·3 per cent. of total local authority expenditure goes on salaries to teachers, and I sincerely hope that the Government are not suggesting a cut in either the salaries or the numbers of teachers. Another 52 per cent. is accounted for by wages,

salaries, superannuation and National Insurance. I do not think that Birmingham is different from any other local authority in these percentages of what has to be paid out.
Another big item of expenditure is 13·7 per cent. interest on and redemption of debt. I do not know whether the Government will suggest ways in which rates of interest will fall rapidly so that we can economise in that respect. We find that 65·7 per cent. of the total expenditure of a large local authority goes on these two last items. I ask, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aston asked: where do we make the efficiency cuts? Where do local authorities make their penny-pinching?
The Government speak of savings by eliminating work which does not have to be done by public authorities. I would be very interested to hear the Government name the work which someone else could do much more efficiently or more cheaply. We have here a kind of bandying of words which has no meaning at all to local authorities. It is completely confusing, and seems to show a complete lack of understanding between local authorities and central Government.
It is fully accepted by practically everyone that private enterprise will take part only in undertakings which show a profit. What are the profitable services that are operated by local authorities? What is the work which they could eliminate by saying that it could be batter done by private enterprise? It will obviously not be the personal services, because those are the expensive services: the educational services, the services for the aged and the handicapped are not services that private enterprise will want to take over. I am sure that it will not want to take over sewerage. Will it want to take over the swimming baths, the water undertaking or the burial grounds? It is important that the Government should let local authorities know where lie the savings from eliminating work that ought to be undertaken by people other than local authorities.
In paragraph 8, page 2, I read something with which I disagree entirely. It says that the continuing growth of public expenditure causes a "discouragement of personal effort". Anyone who knows anything about the work of local authorities knows that in the main it is the


expensive services that they have to undertake because no one else will do them. Can it be said, for example, that the growth of public expenditure has discouraged children from staying on at school after the age of 15? In fact, it is doing exactly the opposite, encouraging personal effort.
I am often worried by the present Government's attitude to what is called public expenditure. Since I have been a Member, I have sensed that the expression "public expenditure" has come to be regarded almost as a banned word, like words in some of the famous books which have been banned. It seems almost that public expenditure ought not to take place at all. In truth, we know that many Acts of Parliament increase local government spending. One of the criticisms which local authorities sometimes make is that legislation is passed but the finance is not forthcoming to put the schemes into operation. As has been said, the burden is being shifted from taxation to the ratepayer. It is easy to pass legislation, but if the necessary finance is not forthcoming, local authorities have no alternative but to disregard the legislation, putting off its local operation, or to increase their rates.
Many extensions of services to the aged, the infirm and the handicapped are not fully implemented by local authorities for the simple reason that adequate finance does not come from the Government, and they feel that they cannot raise their rates to provide for those extensions.
On the one hand, the Order asks for developing services and, on the other, it asks for continuing restraint. The two cannot go together. If there is to be continuing restraint, there will have to be a discontinuance of services.
It is of great personal concern to me in my constituency that there is little or no increase in the amount of money going to what are called parks. Birmingham has gone ahead rapidly with slum clearance. We are developing the city centre with fine new housing, but so many of our schemes are blighted by the open spaces left derelict, just left for one, two or three years, where fly-tipping takes place and where the general landscape, if one can call it that, presents an abject outlook. The local authority is finding

money for its houses because the tenants are having to pay for that facility, but the general landscaping is bad. Open spaces are left bare and derelict, so that the overall appearance of local authority developments in slum clearance areas is appalling. It is most unfortunate that better provision in this respect cannot be made straight away for the people who live there.
I plead with the Minister to give special consideration to local authorities which embark on substantial slum clearance schemes. Let him be far more generous in the allocation in respect of parks. They are not parks as such; they are just public open spaces planted with grass and trees in places where such things were not known before.
The folly of the Orders before us is that in a year when ratepayers will face unprecedented rate increases the Government are making arbitrary efficiency reductions which cannot be sustained and are reducing the relief to the domestic ratepayer. The only consequence will be a substantial curtailment of local authority services or substantial rate increases. At the same time, many of my constituents know that they will have to face higher rents because of future Government policy. With all these increases coming about, and with food prices rising at the same time as a direct result of Government policy, life looks bleak for the average household. Yet, at the same time, the mini-budget gives benefits to those already better off.

7.55 p.m.

Mr. Gerald Kaufman: We have as a guest in this country just now Professor Galbraith. It is a pity that he cannot be here to listen to our debate, for were he to be present he would be able to listen to a Government pursuing a policy which is turning into reality in Britain, after the six years during which we tried to go the other way, his concept of public squalor in the midst of private affluence. That is what the Order will inevitably produce.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Aston (Mr. Julius Silverman) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) both referred to the cut in income tax which the Chancellor announced on 27th October. The hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Maddan) said very honestly that


the Order shifts the balance towards the ratepayer. In fact, the two can be put together as part of an obvious strategy on the part of the Government. On the one hand certain people have reductions in taxation while on the other—the hon. Gentleman put it fairly—the householder will have to pay more. He will have another counter-balance to what he fails to gain from the income tax reduction.
There is one way in which the householder will not be asked to pay more, that is, if the local authority services are reduced. But this brings the Galbraithian distortion into greater prominence, because local authority services are services which those who are worst off require most. A man living in a nice house in an outer suburb with a big garden in which his children can play and no derelict areas round about in which they can be contaminated or have accidents does not think much about local authority services. The basic elements are required, but, apart from them, he can carry on pretty well. If, on the other hand, he lives in the inner part of a large city, such as the constituency which I have the privilege to represent, the services which the local authority can provide are essential for all kinds of amenity. A good environment—how laughable it is that the right hon. Gentleman is Secretary of State for the Environment—can be a reality for him only through the services which the local authority gives.
It is all very well for the hon. Member for Hove to say, in his enthusiasm, that he wants the Government to go ahead with shifting the balance towards the ratepayer, with the inevitable corollary of reduced services if the ratepayer is not to be asked to pay more. He sits for Hove, a nice seaside resort, where there are amenities of every kind. In my constituency, however, for very many of the people whom I represent amenity is minimal, and the Order can only reduce the standard still further.
To the great misfortune of the citizens, the city council of Manchester has for the last three and a half years been controlled by the Conservative Party.
From the moment it took over, the Conservative Party showed a mean mindedness completely against the great civic traditions of the City of Manchester. Over these three and a half years, the Conservatives have continued with their

mean mindedness and linked with it inefficiency. They are reducing services, reducing standards and creating misery for the people whom I have been sent here to represent. The policy which the Order embodies will inevitably add to the inefficiency and increase that mean mindedness.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare (Mr. Probert) referred to derelict land and to the speech which the Prime Minister made when he came to Manchester a fortnight ago. It was my misfortune to be present and to listen to that deplorable speech. In the course of it, the Prime Minister spoke both about derelict land and slum clearance. It would have been far more appropriate if instead of making that speech he had come to my constituency, in my company if he so wished, and had seen areas which the Order will make more difficult and more unpleasant to live in.
Since my election to Parliament six months ago, I have been in correspondence with various civic departments about the problems of derelict land in my constituency, derelict land which is a health hazard, on which children hurt themselves, on which rubbish is tipped. Over the course of six months I have got almost nowhere in my efforts to get that derelict land cleared. I have got nowhere in getting the council to do something about it. I do not even have answers to my letters.

Mr. Paul R. Rose: Is it my hon. Friend's experience that not only does he not receive letters from the city council and not only is there this health hazard, but there is often the terrible hazard of rodent infestation? The Manchester Corporation displays remarkable complacency about this serious problem.

Mr. Kaufman: The problem of rodent infestation is encountered in my constituency. It is one of the most abominable things that families with children have to put up with in certain parts of my constituency. It takes quite an effort to get Manchester Corporation to do something about it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Mrs. Doris Fisher) spoke about amenities around new housing developments. We have growing housing developments in my constituency.


One is near a railway viaduct, Rostron Close. Over the past two months I have twice written to the council asking it to do something about the rubbish which is tipped on this land making an eyesore in front of what should be a great new amenity. So far I have not even had a reply to my letters. Nearby there is a railway arch which has been left open and children can run through it into the traffic.
My correspondance with the council about other sites has reached the stage when I have had a letter from the city planning officer to tell me with some satisfaction that a public spirited organisation in my consituency the Rusholme and Fallowfield Civic Society is taking over one of these derelict sites itself and turning it into a playground. It is utterly deplorable that a great city like Manchester should rely on the civic sense of a voluntary body to do a job which the council is there to do, although I pay tribute to the civic society, which is a fine body. I have had a letter from the city planning officer to tell me about other sites, for instance the Beresford Road site, about which he says that the council cannot do too much, because the cleansing department has only a limited amount of capital and labour to undertake the work. Yet the Government are reducing the resources which will be available to deal with this kind of problem.
The document refers to housing improvements. There are two blocks of flats in my constituency, Heywood House and Brook House, which are some 30 or 40 years old and which are in some need of improvement, but where hundreds of people live. The flats are deteriorating rapidly into derelict civic slums. The tenants are growing disheartened at living there. Whenever I go to these blocks of flats I am certain to be met by complaints about broken glass, mess, lack of amenity and all the rest of it. After a great deal of pushing and after first saying that it could do nothing, Manchester Corporation is to do something about one of the blocks. Far from having increased expenditure on housing improvements to help such blocks of flats, we shall get nowhere with the Government's policy of reducing the amount of help available.

Mr. Maddan: The hon. Gentleman has selectively quoted various aspects of Government policy. Will he refer to that aspect which proposes to change the method of housing subsidy and thus create unprecedented amounts of resources which will be available for rebuilding houses in the sorts of areas and in the big city centres of which the hon. Gentleman is speaking?

Mr. Kaufman: Government policy will put unprecedented amounts on the rents in the constituency. The Manchester Evening News has estimated that the Government's policy will add nearly £1 a week to rents for my constituents, many thousands of whom live in corporation dwellings, and a spokesman for the corporation has described that estimate as realistic. I would welcome the hon. Gentleman to Manchester at any time to tell that to the people who live in corporation dwellings and whose rent was increased months ago, but not until after the General Election and the municipal election.
The Order will have harmful effects in other respects. My hon. Friend the Member for Ladywood mentioned the necessity of providing amenites for new estates. New estates are being built in my constituency. People complain to me that there are no libraries to service people in the new estates and, worse still, libraries are being closed down in other parts of my constituency where they have been a great boon to old people whom the sheer meanness of the Conservative controlled Manchester Council has deprived. We cannot expect any expansion under the policy which the Order embodies.
Part of the perimeter of my constituency is on the Mancunian Way. It was a great misfortune a little time ago that the child of one of my constituents was killed while playing over the Mancunian Way. At the inquest her father made the point that there were limited play areas available to children in the area. I am in correspondence with the council about this and in this respect the council is actually trying to do something, and some action is being taken. But play areas require money and resources and the Order will not make that kind of provision possible, even though it is so


necessary for the children of the people I represent.
This Order tells us about the elimination of unnecessary work. The hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg) in a scathing speech—scathing in terms of the sycophancy with which hon. Members on the other side of the House greet anything which the Government put to this House—spoke about this part of the White Paper. If corporations are being called upon to eliminate tin-necessary work, and heaven knows the Manchester Corporation is not doing anything unnecessary—it is not doing things which are necessary—how on earth can they expand amenities greatly required by constituents? For example, the Manchester Corporation is promoting a Private Bill which will, among other things, compensate people whose domestic amenities are disturbed by the noise from Ringway Airport. I have asked the corporation to consider giving the same compensation to my constituents who live near the freight liner depot in Ardwick and Longsight and whose homes are being made uninhabitable by the freight traffic.
The corporation will not put this into the Bill, it has not got the money. The policy embodied in the Order scarcely makes it possible for the corporation to do anything about it. There is a great debate going on in Manchester about the need for a place where people can make open-air speeches, an extension of democracy. The city council wanted to do something about it, it was actually considering it—it has been considering it ever since April. After passing a resolution in April saying that it was desirable, it decided in November to take no further action because of the expense.
The Chairman of the City Planning Committee said that such a Speakers' Corner would cost half a million pounds, I would be the last to advocate spending that sum on a Speakers' Corner when it could rehouse hundreds of people in my constituency, who badly need housing, However, as the Manchester Evening News said in a leading editorial on 26th November:
Such estimates are sometimes to be taken with a grain of salt.
They are made because the Corporation are not willing to do it and are looking for an excuse.
This is something which the people of Manchester want very badly, as is shown by my correspondence, but it is highly unlikely that we will get it at half a million pounds or even £500 under the skinflint policy embodied in the Order.
All of these matters are burdens which will be passed on to a Labour-controlled council in Manchester just as similar burdens will be passed on to other Labour-controlled authorities when we gain control of hundreds of seats next May, as we obviously will. In the country as a whole and in Manchester in particular, it will then be for the Labour Party to revive the civic services and civic pride. Our cities must be well run or the social problems inherent in them will worsen. We have the experience of the United States to show us what happens to great cities, especially the inner parts of great cities, when they are neglected and when private affluence is put ahead of dealing thoroughly with this problem. The philosophy behind the policy the Government are putting forward is one of neglecting our large cities and neglecting our urban problems. This is a philosophy which is wrong and the longer the Government continue with it and the policy embodied in the Order the sooner will the country come to realise how wrong it is.

8.13 p.m.

Mr. Kenneth Marks: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) for having, in such a detailed way, dealt with the problems which affect constituencies in the great cities of this country. Since his constituency is next to mine and the next area for clearance straddles both our constituencies I can say a profound "Hear, hear" to all that he has said. The words "public expenditure" are dirty words in Conservative circles. Over the past three years in this House I have listened to speeches from hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite attacking the growth in public expenditure which took place under the previous Government.
As a glutton for punishment I watched the Conservative Party conference on television and heard the roars of disapproval every time public expenditure was mentioned. We are now in a situation


where public expenditure will not and cannot be cut because the jobs which have to be done are too important and they are more important than a great deal of the spending which takes place in the private sphere. This Order will not in itself reduce public expenditure but it will force a heavy increase in rates which bear heavily on the less well-off, so that the Government can cut the taxes which will most benefit the wealthy. This is part of the package which the Chancellor brought to the House some weeks ago. It will have the same purpose as that package—increasing the burden on the average householder and holding up the growth of essential services.
Now we can see what the Conservative Party manifesto meant when it said:
We will increase the independence of local authorities.
What it really means is that it will see to it that the ratepayer gets a big increase. During the next few months the citizens of my city and a great many other places will see what a combination of a Tory central Government and Tory-controlled councils can produce. To hear hon. Members opposite one would think that all had been sweetness and light in the discussions between the local authorities and the Government. One might almost expect that to be the case since nearly all the local authorities are Conservative-controlled.
I want to draw the attention of the House to what Alderman Kathleen Ollerenshaw of Manchester City Council said at the end of the discussions. She is the chairman of the education committee of the Association of Municipal Corporations. Until this year she was chairman of the Manchester Education Committee and is a highly respected figure in Conservative education circles. The Times Educational Supplement of 27th November reported this:
Internal squabbles between members of Conservative groups on Conservative-controlled councils will be caused by the result of this week's rate-support grant negotiations, Dr. Kathleen Ollerenshaw … said on Wednesday. The negotiations, she told The Times Educational Supplement, had played right into the hands of the opposition groups. Conservative councils would be faced with either a drastic increase in the rates or a drastic cut in their expansion programmes. They would probably do both, fall between two stools, and would in some cases lose the next local government elections, she said.

I can assure her that the Manchester City Council will be one of the places where her prophecy will come true.
What are the points on which the local authorities felt strongly in these negotiations? First, there was the reduction in the rate of increase of the percentage assistance given to authorities from 1 per cent. to ½ per cent. The 1966 White Paper proposed steady increases so long as the local authorities were reliant upon rates for the majority of their revenue. The local authority associations in the negotiations stressed at the meeting with the Minister the need to continue this steady increase in aid but the Minister refused to accept this argument because he argued that the increase had in the past been used to shield domestic ratepayers unnecessarily from the financial effects of local decisions. The unfortunate timing of the decision meant that there will be considerable rises in rates this year because of increasing costs alone. This was the one year when there was this cut in help from the Government.
The second point was that, relevant expenditure having been broadly agreed, deductions were made of £10 million from the 1971–72 figure and £25 million for improvements in efficiency. "Efficiency", in the Government's view, apparently means making extra charges for local services. Perhaps the Minister will suggest what charges should be made when he replies. Certainly the city of Manchester, at any rate in its officials, has a very high reputation for efficiency. I am sure that the City Treasurer, who has a high reputation in municipal financial circles, could give the Government a hint or two on efficiency. But, efficient or not, the same cut will apply to all authorities.
The authorities' third point relates to the real growth represented by the levels of relevant expenditure referred to in the Order. The City Treasurer pointed out that this does not represent an improvement in the standard of service. A considerable proportion of this new money will be necessary simply to maintain standards in the face of increasing numbers of schoolchildren and elderly people, increases in the volume of sewage, and so on. In the face of this built-in or natural growth, the local authority associations felt that the proposed growth


rate would allow little in the way of improvements.
The City Treasurer has, incidentally, made an estimate—he insists that it is only an estimate—of the grants that would be available to Manchester under the rate support grant. This shows that last year the domestic element had a 35·8 per cent. increase. In the coming year it will have a 9·9 per cent. increase. The resources element last year increased by 7·9 per cent. and next year it will be 4·9 per cent. The needs element increased by 12·6 per cent. last year and it will increase by 9·7 per cent. in the coming year. According to my calculations, these differences are less than in the country as a whole, since the Manchester needs element is very considerable.
I turn to education. In House of Commons Paper No. 172 the Government claim that:
Provision is made for a significant improvement in the level of non-teaching costs per pupil in primary, secondary and special schools and in further education establishments and account is taken of the higher loan charges which will result from the Government's decision to increase the school building programme.
I hope to hear more detail from the Minister when he replies.
The Educational Publishers Council and the Educational Equipment Association brought to our notice recently the relative decline in expenditure on books and equipment. These bodies have vested interests, of course. They want to sell more hooks and equipment, as those of us who have been in the teaching profession and at the receiving end of the salesmanship know. Nevertheless, it is time that those of us who are especially interested in the development of education added our voices to the points they make. One point is that eight years ago, in 1961–62, 3 per cent. of local education authority spending was devoted to books, equipment and stationery. It is now 2½ per cent. on the last available figures for 1968–69. The amount spent on textbooks and library books for primary children was just over £1 a year per child. If we count a 40-week year and not a 52-week year, that is only 6d. per week, probably less than the amount the children spend on comics.
It is no use our building fine primary schools if we do not spend enough money each year to equip the teachers and the

children to do their respective jobs. I am against the purchase of large numbers of sets of textbooks. I have unearthed in cupboards in schools textbooks that were years old, out-of-date and often inaccurate. But in the coming years there will be a need for the purchase of many textbooks. Decimalisation may have some disadvantages, but at least it will have the advantage of getting rid of a vast amount of old-fashioned books based on the old currency.
The level of expenditure on books and equipment, particularly in primary schools, is hopelessly inadequate. Inflation has been especially felt here, because I understand that the cost of paper has increased in the past four years by 40 per cent. and the cost of printing and binding by about 34 per cent.
Purchase tax, too, has a considerable effect, not on books but on stationery and equipment—what we call the bread and butter items of school expenditure. Local education authorities must pay purchase tax on much of their educational purchases, about 16 to 20 per cent., so that of the money they spend at least one-fifth returns to the Government. Government Departments do not pay purchase tax and do not realise the expenditure involved here. I hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will take note of this and as part of the next package give local education authorities exemption from purchase tax at least on items of educational equipment which they purchase.
The capitation allowance which some local authorities make available for the purchase of books and equipment is woefully inadequate. I hope that the Secretary of State for Education and Science will use the powers which she has, and which she should use, to direct local authorities to spend a larger proportion on them.
Why is all this important in the context of the rate support grant? It is because when local authorities are looking for areas in which they can cut, this is one that they choose. They cannot do much about teachers' pay, because that is fixed nationally. They cannot interfere with the school building programme, because it is long term. So they come down to a pretty narrow field.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ardwick mentioned that Manchester has had a Conservative Council for 3½ years.


Before coming to the House in 1967, I was head of a school in Manchester, and the last meeting I attended took place shortly after the Conservative Council took office. That was in May, and in September we were called to a meeting to be told that the council had decided in that calendar year to make a cut of 2½ per cent. in education expediture. In the middle of the year the range was very narrow, and it was money for books, equipment and stationery which had not been spent during the current year which caught it. I urge the Government to encourage local authorities to spend money on equipment, books and stationery in schools.
The difference between the attitude of the two main parties is to be seen in public expenditure. Money spent on education, the social services and the whole range of local government services is more important than private spending. I understand that around the offices in Whitehall the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry is called the Minister for Private Affluence, and the Secretary of State for the Environment is called the Minister for Public Squalor. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman does not live up to that title, but the rate support grant Order does not encourage me to think that my hope will be realised.

8.29 p.m.

Mr. Ray Carter: I rise principally to address myself to a constituency matter on the rate support grant.
Before doing so, I will address myself to some of the bizarre comments that have come from the Government side today. They remind me of an incident which occurred during a by-election I fought at Warwick and Leamington in 1968, when the Prime Minister, then the Leader of the Opposition, was pulling every punch to win a series of by-elections. During the second week of my campaign he issued a Press statement saying that Conservative councils had been extremely successful in holding back rate increases and, in some cases, reducing the rates. I could not believe this, because I knew that the Labour Government had introduced rates subsidy legislation, and at that time the central Government was subsidising local authorities to the tune

of 10d. in the £. I said to a journalist, "Surely he knows of the existence of this, and knows that what he is saying is not true." The journalist said, "Oh, no, he probably does not know at all." Having heard some of the comments from the Government side today I am quite prepared to believe that the journalist was right.
At that time I was a member of a Tory-controlled local authority in Berkshire which was able to increase expenditure whilst at the same time reducing the rate burden—probably because of rate subsidies. I have found it strange that Conservative-controlled local authorities should criticise the Labour Government for not giving them enough help when I have asked them to take a certain action to improve local services. I wonder what these Conservative-controlled councils will say to the ratepayers now that a Conservative Government have taken the reverse action and reduced the contribution from the central Government?
From my experience as a councillor, I am convinced that rates are the best form of taxation. I have doubts about the way rates are levied, and I think that the system is rather iniquitous. Nevertheless, ratepayers can see what the local authorities provide for them, whereas they cannot see what general taxation provides. Local people can also see what needs to be done and raise their voices in support of a particular cause. When a rate increase has to be made to raise money for that cause they are often quite prepared to pay the increase.
This cut in the rate support grant is disastrous. It represents a cut of 46 per cent. It is bound to increase the burden on the ratepayers, and it is bound to be inflationary. Already my own Conservative-controlled City of Birmingham is talking in terms of a 2s. 6d. in the £ increase. This comes on top of two previous years when increases have exceeded 2s.
I come now to the point that is of concern to my constituency. It is an issue of life and death. It is a matter with which I was concerned as a candidate for 18 months in trying to get the Conservative council to take action. It refused, it lied, and I was subjected to


a great deal of evasion on the part of the chairman of the public works committee. Twice I called on him to resign. He lacked the wisdom to do so and is still there.
This whole matter concerns a road called Longbridge Lane which runs from the biggest car works in Europe, British Leyland. That road carries articulated lorries which contain six to eight cars; it carries a great deal of the traffic going to and from the works delivering vehicles and the people who work there. It is probably the worst road in Britain. As a result of this cut in the rate subsidy, it stands no chance in the future of being improved or remodelled. The accident figures for this road are staggering. In the past three years there have been over 130 accidents; more than 50 have resulted in some form of hospital treatment, five have ended in death.
I initially took up this case when a man was killed in an area along the road where there is no light. I immediately asked the Conservative chairman of the public works committee to take action to get the road improved. He wrote back to say that this was impossible because the Government, then the Labour Government, would not produce the necessary finance to carry out the improvements. I wrote to the Ministry to ask why it refused to grant this finance to the Birmingham City Council. The Ministry told me that it was not a road which could qualify for Government assistance; all that was required was that the Birmingham City Council should ask the Minister for loan consent. I went back to the chairman of the public works committee. He admitted that he was wrong. I then asked him to carry out some form of inquiry to establish the relative prioriy of this road vis-à-vis the other roads in the city. He refused.
All this was published in the local Press. I sent the chairman of the public works committee 3,000 names of people who were vitally concerned with this road and who wanted to see it reach a state where death and blood was removed from the scene. I was implored by residents in the road who, week in and week out, had to go into the road to lift mangled bodies from cars to urge the Conservative council in Birmingham to carry out the necessary road improvements. All kinds

of people got in touch with me, but I was unsuccessful.
Since coming to the House I have asked the Conservative-controlled council in Birmingham to take action, but it has said it cannot do so. However, I wonder what that council will do now that a Conservative Government will allow it to have even less money in the kitty.
What am I to tell my constituents of Longbridge Lane who have witnessed over 130 accidents in three years in which five people have been killed and 40 have been taken to hospital? I can only tell them that this Government are heartless; that they have their priorities totally wrong.
I hope that even at this late stage Birmingham City Council, which has not so far shown a great deal of compassion, will urge the Government to rethink their proposals. Obviously it is too late in the day. I shall have to go back to my constituents and tell them that I have tried extremely hard to get improvements made in this road but that the chances in future are even slimmer because of the cut in the rate support grant. I think that the council, even though it is politically partisan, should be honest and come clean and admit that the Government are not interested in improving the environment in which people live.
I sincerely hope that some extra thought will be given to our road problems in cities—problems which are increasing day by day, and certainly increasing in my constituency, which has this tremendous factory right in the middle of it. If the Government have second thoughts I am sure that the people of Longbridge Lane, even though they have waited three years for improvements to that road, will be grateful. I therefore appeal to the Government to think again.

8.42 p.m.

Mr. Peter Rost: As a ratepayer, I wish to make a brief contribution to the debate. I speak on behalf of long-suffering ratepayers, particularly in south-east Derbyshire.
I should like to pose two questions for the consideration of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment who so ably opened the debate.
Despite the substantial help which the Government are providing in the Order,


rates will again go up substantially. I should like to know, first, whether we really are sure that the additional expenditure being undertaken by local authorities is necessary; and, secondly, whether the whole question of reforming the system of local government taxation will be considered?
On the first point—whether the extra expenditure is necessary—I do not suggest that there can be any substantial reductions in, for example, education. On the contrary, we are obliged, and we intend, to increase expenditure in such important spheres. But I maintain that there are substantial areas where we could produce more efficiency than is at present being achieved.
I should like to be reassured that local authorities all over the country are effectively employing bulk purchasing policies to create greater economies. I should like an assurance that local authorities throughout the country are getting sufficient guidance whether they are perhaps undertaking too much paper work.
I should like an assurance that local authorities are not employing more personnel than they really need, because this is a major item of expenditure. I have particularly in mind direct building departments. I am convinced—and I would like to be proved wrong—that certain direct works departments are not running as efficiently as perhaps they could be and are not able, in some cases, to do the work as economically as outside private enterprise firms could do it.

Mr. Clinton Davis: It is all very well for the hon. Gentleman to cast such aspertions at large about direct building operations carried on by local authorities, but it is quite another thing to substantiate his case. Will he produce cogent evidence instead of making these bare assertions?

Mr. Rost: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. It is not my purpose now to give chapter and verse of individual cases. I have merely posed the point that I believe that the Government and we in this House should ensure that there are no cases of inefficiency and that the whole question should be looked at again. In the past, such cases have come to light. The whole

thing needs looking at if we are to control the ever-rising increase in rates.
Another example of where perhaps we are employing more people in local government than we need came to light during the recent dustmen's strike. One local authority decided to contract the work out and found that private enterprise was able to do it not only more cheaply to the ratepayers but more efficiently because it doubled the number of collections, making them weekly instead of fortnightly. In addition, the employees in the private contracting firm were earning substantially more than the dustmen employed by the local authority. I merely suggest that perhaps we have not looked deply enough into the whole question of whether functions now performed by local authorities could be more economically carried out by outside contracting on a more competitive basis.
My third example is that of road maintenance. The activity could well be looked into. Perhaps private contractors could do the work far more efficiently and cheaply than those employed at the moment by the local authorities. These are some of the activities my right hon. Friend could look at and advise the local authorities accordingly, in order to achieve economies.
Rating reform has been mentioned in the debate. There are great inequities in the present system. There is one aspect which causes more distress and annoyance perhaps than any other. I have a petition already signed by several thousand of my constituents on this matter. It affects primarily owner-occupiers but also some tenants who spend their own money on improving their houses—particularly in the installation of central heating—and then find that they are re-rated as a result. Quite rightly, this causes considerable annoyance. People who have spent their own money on improving their houses regard it as unfair that they should be subject to increased taxatian as a result. I should be obliged if my right hon. Friend would look into this aspect of local government rating as an example of an unfair system.
A second matter with regard to the unfairness of the rating system is that in many cases the nationalised industries do not pay their fair whack of rates. This causes an unbalance in many local


authorities where there are large nationaised industry headquarters or properties which do not contribute towards the rates, and an extra burden is placed on the rest of the community. To spread the burden more evenly, I should be obliged if that matter could be looked into.
But that is only a quibble, because it is the overall problem of local taxation which must be examined. The present system is most unsatisfactory. Over the next year or two, the whole matter must be subjected to reform. Naturally, I am not this evening making any suggestions along these lines, as this is not the time to do so. But I emphasise that we have to restructure not only local government boundaries and the administration of local government, to achieve greater efficiency, but at the same time we have to completely restructure the finance of local government, so that the burden at least falls more evenly on the taxpayer according to his ability to pay.
I give wholehearted support to the Order because I regard it as an interim measure until we can tackle the fundamental problems of local government reform, involving boundary structure, administration and finance.

8.52 p.m.

Mr. David Stoddart: I wish first to emphasise and re-emphasise that rates are a regressive form of tax. They tall more harshly on the poorer sections of the community than on the richer sections. It is all the more reprehensible, therefore, that the Order will tend to push the burden further on to the ratepayers, making an already regressive tax even more so. The decision having been taken to swing more of public expenditure on to local authorities, it is extremely urgent that the Government should do something tangible about the reorganisation of local government finance, if possible at the same time as there is a reorganisation of local government boundaries.
The Order concerns me very much on behalf of my constituency. The Swindon authority has already announced a supplementary rate increase this year of 6d. in the £ from 1st January. It has also indicated that this increase will be followed by a further increase of 3s. in the £ from 1st April next. It is absolutely no use telling this local authority that it has to contribute to

overall efficiency, because apparently as a Conservative controlled council, it says that it has already made this contribution by a reorganisation of its internal management structure.
The people of Swindon will be concerned that the present Order may very well put on them greater burdens than they bear already and expect to bear from the 1st April next.
The services which are likely to suffer when the cuts come to be made—and cuts are inevitable—are those in the hands of local authorities. I have in mind, for example, the meals-on-wheels service, the home help service, the maintenance and repair of roads, and facilities in our towns. As a Member representing an expanding town, I am extremely concerned about the lack of facilities for those who have been induced to come there to live and work. Only a week ago I met a deputation of young people who complained bitterly that there was nothing for them to do and nothing provided for them in Swindon. For their leisure activities they have to go as far as Bristol. It is services of this sort that the local authorities will cut. As one of my hon. Friends said, they are part of the environment and of the society in which we live. Unless we are prepared to spend more public money in these directions, our environment will suffer.
Too little attention is given to the transport services provided in many of our towns. In many cases the nonexistence of them is becoming a disgrace. Before long we shall find vast tracts of our towns laid to waste for the provision of roads which will never accommodate the cars that will be attracted by them. At the same time, large sections of our communities will be denied the opportunity to travel from home to work or to the town centre.
Far from reducing the rate support grant and asking local authorities to economise, the Government should be honouring their pledge to set local authorities free and give them the opportunity and wherewithal to improve their environments and the local services without which the country cannot exist.

8.58 p.m.

Mr. Peter Fry: Mercifully, my intervention will be brief. I support these two Orders with some misgiving. I regard them as being, in the


end, a bitter pill for many domestic ratepayers. Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Northants, South (Mr. Arthur Jones), I do not set great store on revaluation. I remember the last revaluation. I suggest that it created almost as many difficulties as it solved, especially amongst owner-occupiers.
The problem of rating reform is germane to this whole debate. I agree with the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) that there is no quick and easy panacea. In the years that I spent in local government studying this problem, I became convinced that the eventual answer must be a combination of measures. Obviously some degree of the present rating structure must remain. I have in mind those parts of it which apply to business and commercial premises. In addition, help must be given to domestic ratepayers, especially those on small incomes. Assistance must also be given to our great cities with their denuded central areas.
The time has come to be much more realistic. All those who benefit from the rates should contribute if they are in full-time employment. It is ludicrous that there can be two adjoining houses paying the same rates, one occupied by a widow whose income is just above the level at which she can gain some support and the other occupied by six or seven people who are all in full-time employment.
I believe that, after constant revaluations, as the level of the rates increase people will become increasingly dissatisfied with the present system, and, therefore, I am looking forward eagerly to the Green Paper which we expect after the Christmas Recess giving the Government's conclusions on the reform of local government finance.
I appreciate that one of the Government's purposes in presenting these figures to us is to make local authorities look again at their programmes to see how much they can save. But let us not fool ourselves; the margin that they have is exceedingly small. Anyone who has sat on a county council finance committee knows that very little can be done. I have spent three or four hours on an education committee to save £10,000 on a budget of £1½ million. This is very

often the extent of what can be done in local government to cut local expenditure.
On the other hand, I believe that what the Government are doing today is very good for setting an attitude. I remember a couple of years ago being on a governing body and examining the estimates of a school for the coming year. I was horrified to see amongst the projected expenditure one deep freeze and six automatic sewing machines. When I tackled the headmistress about this, she was surprised to think that I considered that expenditure unnecessary. I said that if we were ever to try to get any sense into local government finance we had to start at that level. Each school governing body and each sub-committee of a council has to examine whether its expenditure is essential.
As I say, I believe that the margin for cuts is very narrow indeed, but I regard these two Orders very much as a holding operation, as my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Rost) said. I await eagerly and critically what the Government will have to propose after the recess, and, therefore, though I support both these Orders, I do so with a certain amount of trepidation about the effect that they will have on many domestic ratepayers.

9.3 p.m.

Dr. John Gilbert: There are many reasons why one can deplore the cuts involved in these Orders. There are, however, two points which I should like to emphasise. They both relate to matters on which local government spending is inadequate, and where it will have to rise, at least in one case. They are two similar problems, but the principles involved are quite different.
The first involves the Minister for Social Security and the whole question of provision for the disabled. Due largely to the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Alfred Morris), there is on the Statute Book an Act which represents the first comprehensive attempt to deal with the problems facing the disabled. That is now the law of the land, but many sections of the Act await Ministerial action before they are brought into effect.
When those sections are brought into effect there will, inevitably, be huge increases in local authority spending on the


disabled, and quite rightly so, and I have to be frank and say that many hon. Members, on this side of the House at any rate, are apprehensive that the delay in activating certain sections of the Act is probably due to the fear in the Minister's mind that when local authorities get down to compiling a comprehensive register, as it will be their statutory duty to do, it will be found that the total number of disabled is very much greater than any of us has hitherto suspected. We must hope that is not the case but, if it should prove to be so, it will mean that the total sum of human unhappiness and suffering is also much greater than we have hitherto suspected. When this part of the legislation is implemented the financial burden upon local authorities will inevitably be much greater than at present. I hope that the Government will not merely try continually to delay on this exceedingly important social problem.
My last point concerns concessionary bus fares for the old, the blind and the disabled. Some local authorities have a very good record on this; some have introduced merely token schemes, and some—like my own—have done virtually nothing. Schemes have been negotiated with transport authorities and undertakings but nothing has been done. The local authority has dragged its feet. The schemes have not been implemented. In the case of the blind and the disabled the amount of money involved is often trifling.
This is a social problem of increasing seriousness. We are not talking about luxuries—about such things as television sets; we are talking about the basic problem of the old-age pensioner in getting from his or her home to a shopping centre, or to a local social club, or in visiting neighbours, friends and relatives in different parts of the same borough. If they are really concerned about the social problems of old age the Government should act speedily and with generosity. I have had more correspondence on this than on any other subject since I became a Member.
These schemes do not make a great demand on national resources; they are purely transfer expenditures. The buses are running anyway. Most of the schemes operate in off-peak hours. There is no additional consumption of petrol or oil.
There is no great addition in terms of maintenance. There are no extra wages to be paid to the bus crews. There is no reason why we cannot do something for our old people—something that would mean very much to them.
Not long ago I put down a Question to the Minister asking him if he would ascertain exactly what schemes were in existence, so that we could know what the facts were. He refused to do so, but gave no reason. I hope that he may be induced to change his mind. If we have a survey I am afraid that he may find that the problems are much greater than he suspects. If so, there will be an overwhelming case either for the institution of a national scheme for concessionary bus fares for the old, the blind and the disabled, or for him to make it mandatory on local authorities to introduce their own schemes—not merely token schemes but schemes with minimum acceptable standards.

9.9 p.m.

Mr. Clinton Davis: I agree with what my hon. Friend has said. I want to stress some of the problems that are being faced by boroughs—especially those in the inner London area. There is likely to be a foaming Niagara of discontent about rates in the inner London area. I hesitate to think what will happen next March. Certain political tactics may be devised because there is to be an election in May, but in my borough the situation has got out of control. The local authority, which has been Conservative since 1968, has introduced schemes based largely on political dogma, which have wasted the resources available in this borough—resources that could have been used in many vital spheres.
One of the first things the council did in trying to deal with the problem of homelessness was to take over an old G.L.C. property of 110 dwellings and herd 110 families into it. I understand that a similar policy is being undertaken in Wandsworth. We on the Labour side of the council described in graphic terms what would happen. We said that it would be a waste of money and that tremendous social problems would be created by herding families together, and that is exactly what has happened.
There is a certain amount of lawlessness there, but the families which are innocent of that lawlessness must carry the stigma. Instead of being able, as we could have done, to buy up properties individually all over the borough and deal with the homeless in a humane way, the council embarked on this policy, and the folly of it is now abundantly plain.
Families in Duncan House, which is what it is called, are living in misery not because of the nature of the block of flats—there are many worse—but because of what the people in the surrounding area believe and because there are some who live in Duncan House who do not conform to the rules. This policy was born out of political prejudice.
The hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Rost) spoke of direct labour, and, while he did not exactly castigate direct labour schemes, he suggested that there might be something wrong with direct labour forces throughout the country. Time and again I heard in my council from 1968 onwards that sort of allegation. There was no evidence, but just the bare assertion. That will not do.
Since the Conservatives came to power in local government they have suspected and attacked direct labour schemes, notwithstanding the evidence that has always been available. Although there are a few instances where direct labour schemes have not operated properly, in the main they have improved standards, have accepted high standards and have saved substantial sums for local ratepayers.

Mr. Rost: Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that there is no evidence of inefficiency in direct labour schemes? Whether or not he is, I was making the point that in many cases it is difficult to judge whether there is inefficiency and whether the work could be done more economically by private enterprise contracting outside simply because the opportunity is never afforded for contracting outside.

Mr. Davis: That is simply not so. We in Hackney had an independent survey into the direct labour force. The Conservative members of the council believed that it would show direct labour schemes

to be inefficient. They were proved to be wrong. This has happened in other parts of the country. We have been engaged in competitive tendering. Indeed, more often than not the direct labour force has won these tenders, and deservedly so. So the hon. Member's intervention will not do. All he has done is to underline his earlier attack on direct labour schemes, which was bereft of any evidence at all.
I cannot think of even one scheme which the Conservatives have innovated. In not one case have they produced a novel idea. When I was chairman of the welfare committee my chief welfare officer was constantly producing new schemes—Continental holidays for the disabled, and the like—but we have seen nothing of that sort since 1968. But we have had cuts in our library and welfare services.
In one respect the Conservatives have been absolutely positive. They introduced a scheme whereby bailiffs distrain on arrears of rent in the sum of £20. This has been a tremendous success. It was introduced last year and as yet not one distress warrant has been issued. But they had to waste money in setting up the scheme. We spent hours debating it, when it was pointed out quite clearly that the whole thing was an extravaganza and could not possibly begin to operate in any positive way.
In one instance my local authority has been obliged to incur expenditure because of the reckless behaviour of another local authority. There is a terrace of houses in Paragon Road which was acquired from the old Hackney Borough Council by the Greater London Council. It comprises 12 properties, and is part of a larger estate which the Greater London Council now has.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman says, but he must link it with the Orders.

Mr. Davis: I was seeking to establish, Mr. Speaker, how our health department has been obliged to waste money because of the activities of another local authority.
No fewer than seven public health notices have been served by the London Borough of Hackney's medical officer of health on the Greater London Council—

Mr. Speaker: Order. With great respect, I am listening to the hon. Gentleman's account of a quarrel between the two local authorities, but he must link this with the Orders.

Mr. Davis: This is something on which my local authority has been obliged to waste its resources. The health department employs a large number of people who are vitally required to undertake this sort of work in respect of private landlords, and the resources that have been wasted could usefully have been employed elsewhere. One has only to go to Hackney to see how many private landlords fail to equip their properties properly and allow them to fall into wrack and ruin. It is an absolute scandal that the Greater London Council should behave like a Rachmanite landlord and cause the London Borough of Hackney to deploy its resources in this way—

Mr. Speaker: Order. It may be the absolute scandal the hon. Gentleman talks about, but we are discussing the rate grant and an increase of the rate grant and he must link his remarks to the Orders we are discussing.

Mr. Kaufman: Would not my hon. Friend agree that if this Order had not been put forward the householders would have been aided more by the Government, and that, therefore, the resources which the householders are now being called on to provide under the Order would have been available to pursue this quarrel with the G.L.C.?

Mr. Speaker: I am sure that the hon. Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Clinton Davis) will be grateful to his hon. Friend for trying to get him in order.

Mr. Davis: I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend for his ingenuity, Mr. Speaker, but the point has been made and I can now pass from it.
What I have been trying to establish is that in a whole variety of ways there has been a poor allocation of resources by the London Borough of Hackney. This is clear in Hackney, as it is clear in a large number of boroughs in inner London which are now controlled by the Conservatives, though, happily, only for a few months more.

9.20 p.m.

Mr. John Silkin: There are debates in the House which excite emotion, anger, even bombast, yet when the smoke of battle has cleared one has learned little of the essential differences which divide the two major parties. I believe that it is, rather, in a quiet debate of the sort on we have had today, a debate in which hon. Members on both sides have related these Orders to their several constituencies, that we can clearly see the differences between the two parties expressed.
Broadly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) pointed out earlier, there is a prejudice even a grudge, in the Tory philosophy against public expenditure. The basis of Labour thinking, on the other hand, is the unashamed approval of public expenditure. I make no apology for that view. It seems to me that civilisation is about public expenditure, and civilisation, like compassion, cannot be had on the cheap. The glories of Greek and Roman antiquity which we can still marvel at today were not the result of a cheeseparing or pennywise philosophy. The greatness of a civilisation is in direct proportion to the ratio of its resources which its devotes to the community as a whole.
It is, therefore, in the light of a desire to increase, not to diminish, public affluence that we on these benches scrutinise the Orders before us. Equally, it is in the light of a desire to cheesepare that hon. Members opposite, or many of them, view the Orders. I thought that the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg) expressed it most clearly of all. He came here, he flashed across our darkened sky like a comet, and disappeared we know not where—possibly in the direction of Hampstead—and he told us that his condemnation of the Labour administration in Camden which had preceded that of his own party was based on the charge that it was spendthrift, by which he meant, I suppose, that it spent more than he and his colleagues are presently spending.
That is not a matter upon which I should digress now. Rather, I think, we can leave it to the intelligent electors of Camden to make their choice in due course. But, at least, the choice is there, and it has, as I say, been clearly expressed.

Mr. Peter Walker: The electors have made their choice already.

Mr. Silkin: No. With respect to the right hon. Gentleman, the choice in this House was made on a false prospectus. The local electors will make their choice in due course, but at least they will make it on the basis of what we know to be the facts regarding public expenditure and the desire for public affluence. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman)—who, also, does not seem to be here at the moment—described it as a Galbraithian situation.
I thought that the hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Maddan) duly expressed the spirit of his hon. Friends when he talked about the need for local authorities to deal in candle ends, though he may have been influenced by the state of affairs which we have been experiencing.

Mr. Arthur Jones: An association of ideas.

Mr. Silkin: An association of ideas, perhaps, yes.
It is our first criticism of these Orders, therefore, that they go against the whole spirit and the whole philosophy that we have about public expenditure.
It was in the inevitable need, as we saw it, for an increased public expenditure in local government that the 1966 White Paper on local government finance had its origin. It spoke of a steadily rising increase in the percentage of expenditure and it said that this was to be met by the rate support grant wherever possible. Is this the moment to abolish, or at any rate diminish, this steadily rising increase in percentage? It has been for these four years a steady fixed increase of I per cent., and advisedly so.
It may well be that one day hon. and right hon. Gentlemen despite, there will be a change in local government financing; we do not know; but until that happens we must have central Government assistance increasingly brought into the realm of local authority finance, because while rating remains our only local source of taxation it needs the help of the central Government.
I come to my third point. In any event, this seems to me of all times to be the wrong time to be reducing that steadily increasing percentage from 1 to ½ per cent., or any other figure. The

very fact that the two years preceding it were years of considerable restraint, as the Secretary of State pointed out, is itself an argument for taking a different attitude today. The two years of hard slog that followed devaluation brought with them great difficulties and hardships and undoubtedly local authorities expected to play their full part in combating these difficulties, and they were right to do so.
Nevertheless, the fact that for two years there was this hard slog and restraint left certain problems. The Minister of Local Government and Development has already been quoted several times, probably because, as I have always suspected, inside him there is a little Fabian bursting to come out, but every time it reaches the conscious area, his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer hits it with a hammer and knocks it back. I quote him in the debate on the Rate Support (Increase) Order a year ago, and very wise words they were:
Repair and maintenance of buildings cannot be neglected for more than two years without major expenditure on structures becoming necessary. Repairs on roads cannot be neglected for more than two years without resulting in major expenditure on road foundations. School books and school equipment cannot be left to become worn and out-of-date for more than two years."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th December, 1969; Vol. 793, c. 1071.]
Of course he was right.
What would be a reasonable figure of growth, the lowest one could find, to deal purely with the repairs and maintenance of which he spoke? Local authorities are in no doubt: they put the figure at an average of 5 per cent. What we face in these Orders is an average increase over the two years of 4·2 per cent. I do not believe that that will be sufficient, without a considerable increase in rates, to keep repairs and maintenance alive and with us. I applaud the Minister of Local Government and Development. I am sure we will hear him reiterate tonight the words he used so wisely a year ago.
The third point of disagreement we have with these Orders comes in the cut of £10 million for 1971–72 and £25 million for 1972–73, cavalierly described as an "efficiency cut". I cannot help feeling that the Secretary of State plucked the figures out of the air around No. 11 Downing Street. I suspect that there can


be little basis for these figures or any concrete basis for them in terms of an efficiency cut. It was noticeable that only one hon. Gentleman opposite mentioned the efficiency cut aspect, apart from the Secretary of State.

Mr. Arthur Jones: Is it not true that the £35 million represents approximately 1 per cent. of local government expenditure, which is surely a modest figure?

Mr. Silkin: Before I entered this House I was, for my sins, like the Minister of Local Government and Development, a lawyer. If there is one thing a lawyer trades in it is exactness, and if there is one thing he does not trade in it is percentages.
I am talking in terms of £35 million, a considerable figure. I was also talking about his hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead, the only hon. Friend he has who mentioned the question of efficiency. He said that this was total nonsense and he was agreeing with those of my hon. Friends who have attacked the whole of this efficiency cut basis.
The Secretary of State made the best case he could in the Report, on page 5, paragraph 22. Here he tells us how he proposes to get his £35 million. Local authorities are to get it for him, through the greater use of management services. He mentions L.A.M.S.A.C., but he does not mention, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Aston (Mr. Julius Silverman) acutely pointed out, the fact that a large number of local authorities already use these services. He mentions bulk purchasing, calling it "pool purchasing arrangements". Again, he does not mention, as my hon. Friend acutely pointed out, that many local authorities are already using these arrangements. Then he says the introduction or extension of incentive schemes will help. All this will result in the saving of £35 million. He goes on rather modestly to say that the full impact will not be realised immediately. I very much doubt whether it will he realised at all. He may produce a few thousand pounds but I very much doubt that it will be £35 million.

Mr. Peter Walker: Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the previous Government, by refusing to make an increase Order slashed £100 million, and £50 million of that was absorbed? That

action shows that £35 million in two years probably will be absorbed.

Mr. Silkin: I do not think that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite can go on for ever trying to blame their sins on the previous Administration. I am willing to take the right hon. Gentleman's point and say that we were at that time in a crisis year. We had a balance of payments deficit of what were alarming proportions. This has fortunately now been turned into the greatest surplus the country has ever known. I am sure that in assisting their Labour Government to reach this balance of payments surplus even Conservative local authorities were patriotic enough to feel that they had to play their share. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Aston pointed out that the so-called efficiency cut affects the just and the unjust, those who are efficient as well as those who are inefficient. But, even if it were spread, what scope is there to local authorities to make the cuts?
I was very impressed with the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Mrs. Doris Fisher). I cannot quite remember the figures she gave. They were in percentages, and the House will have heard some strictures from me about percentages. Possibly she introduced percentages to save us the frightening financial concrete sums that were in her head. She said that 52 per cent. of the expenditures of the city of Birmingham was by way of salaries, and gave a figure of, I think, 13 or 13·5 per cent. that was interest and loan charges. That does not leave much of a margin for efficiency cuts.
But that is not the end of the story The overwhelming amount of work that a local authority has to do is dictated to it, I would say rightly, by central Government. If, for example, the Secretary of State for Education and Science wishes to give a directive about the size of classes in primary schools, which we hope that she may well do, it is the local authority that will in due course have to meet a large proportion of the cost. Therefore, what room there is for a local authority by itself to make cuts of the sort the Secretary of State talks about, I do not see. I give the right hon. Gentleman the benefit of any doubt. I doubt whether left to himself, he would have introduced that figure. It was probably whispered


to him outside or inside No. 11 Downing Street.
I mentioned a moment ago the question of salaries and quoted my hon. Friend's estimate of salaries being 52 per cent. of the expenditure of the city of Birmingham. Yes, but what about the salary claims in the pipeline? I realise that the manual workers' increases in pay is met by the increase Order, but there are further pay settlements in the pipeline. I hope that I am not being, in the sinful expression of today, inflationary when I say that it will not surprise me if teachers, police and firemen, in addition to being required in greater number, will also require bigger salaries in the year or two ahead. In other words, there is needed for local authority expenditure an increased figure for repairs and maintenance merely to keep the situation as it was. I pray in aid the Minister for Local Government and Development, who I am sure will support me on that.
For what is needed is not a cut-back for efficiency but an increase to make the local authorities more efficient, and that is what we are after. Otherwise the local authorities will be left with the dilemma of either not doing anything—letting the situation get worse—or putting the rates up by a considerable amount.
In so far as that additional burden falls upon the individual ratepayer, the Secretary of State has played his part in halving the rate of increase in the domestic rate. He says, quite rightly, "Yes, this had to stop some time". He quotes his predecessor in the 1966 Labour Government as saying, "Of course, it would not go on for ever at 1 per cent.". But his predecessor in 1966 had in mind the possibility that there might be other methods of rating finance and he could not possibly commit himself for all time. He believed that as long as the need was there the domestic ratepayer should be protected. Various estimates have been made of what a domestic ratepayer may have to face in increased rates. One hon. Gentleman suggested that the minimum increase might be as much as 2s. 6d. in the pound. This is a very great increase, if it comes. For these reasons we on this side of the House do not view the Orders with favour.
I started with the philosophy that divided the two major parties. This has

ben on honest debate; no attempt has been made to paper over the differences or to try to bring the two philosophies together. There is the philosophy of public expenditure and there is the philosophy spending only what one is obliged to spend. Those are the two philosophies which are in conflict today. Unfortunately this is part of a continuing process, a process that was made evident from the moment the Government were elected. It can be seen in the attitude of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and in the shift of burden from rate to taxation and the other way round in the cutting of income tax and the increase of rates. This can be seen all the way through. It is happening in a dozen areas of which this is only one.
My right hon. Friend has explained the traditional reasons why we on this side of the House cannot divide on the Orders. Unfortunately, our hands are bound but, if we could, I have not the slightest doubt that not only would we divide on the Orders, but the country as a whole would be with us in that Division.

9.42 p.m.

The Minister for Local Government and Development (Mr. Graham Page): The right hon. Member for Deptford (Mr. John Silkin) did me the honour of quoting a number of statements which I made on the previous occasion when we were discussing a rate support grant Order. He quoted me as having said that there had been insufficient money for repair and maintenance for the previous two years. No doubt at that time I was referring to the two years previous to the debate, when there had been neglect of repair and maintenance of buildings or neglect of roads, and my point was that we could not go on with that. The argument of the right hon. Gentleman was that two years ago the Labour Government were in such a mess that they had to be cheese-paring, the implication being that we are doing so well now that we should not call for any restraint.
The debate on the rate support grant Order is bound to range widely over local government affairs, and one cannot therefore give an orderly reply. It is a wide-ranging debate because the subject of the Order is the development of local authorities' services, the increase in Government grant and the proportion of the cost


to be borne by the taxpayer and the ratepayer respectively.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in his opening speech called the House's attention to the fact that we face, and must face, the fact that the growth of local auhority expenditure is greater than that of the growth of total public expenditure. I must disagree with the hon. Lady the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Mrs. Doris Fisher) that we cannot have development of services and a continuing restraint. Of course we can.
The hon. Lady asked for consideration of assistance for open-space creation in slum clearance areas. Indeed, we would give encouragement, and indeed have done so, to general improvement area orders which solve some of the problems for the hon. Lady. If she would look at the figures for parks, for example, she would see that whereas in 1969–70 there was a minus percentage, not an increase, in 1970–71 there was an increase of 2·9 per cent. In both the years for which this Order now applies the increase is 4 per cent. It represents a very substantial increase on just the type of local government service to which she was referring.
Since I have the figures in front of me, I notice that those relating to refuse might be relevant on the points raised by the hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman). In that case in 1970–71 the growth which was then recognised in the relevant expenditure was 3·7 per cent. in the next two years. We are recognising it as 6·5 per cent. for each year, which is a very substantial increase. The hon. Gentleman referred to public health in general. Had he looked carefully at the figures he would have seen that in 1969–70 the figure taken into account was £163 million, and in the next year £176 million. But for the two years with which we are dealing in this Order, the figures respectively are £209 million and £219 million, which finishes up almost a third above the figure in 1969–70.
Since so many subjects are covered, it is easy for the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) to complain about lack of information on some subject or another. He mentioned education, as did his hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks). I shall be brave enough, in the presence of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State

for Education and Science, to give the right hon. Gentleman a little information on this subject. The rate support grant negotiations were preceded by a long and careful study of the data available for the forecasting of local authority educational expenditure. That study was carried out jointly by officials of the Department of Education and Science and of the local authorities. The results are set out in detail in a joint report, which is a co-operative effort greatly to be praised. The report recorded almost complete agreement between the Department and the local authorities.
It was therefore possible to say that the forecasts of the educational components of relevant expenditure for rate support grant in 1971–72 of £2,055 million and for 1972–73 of £2,148 million include provision for increases in education proper of 5·1 per cent. in the first year and 4·9 per cent. in the second year. This compares pretty favourably with the previous figures of 3·8 per cent. for 1969–70 and 3·9 per cent. for 1970–71. In regard to non-teaching expenditure the settlement this year allows for substantial improvement factors. Again making a comparison with the years 1969–70 and 1970–71, the figures of increase then were 2½ per cent. and 1 per cent. For the two years which we are now debating we have taken into account increases of 3½ per cent. and 3 per cent. So we are nearly doubling the increase over those years.
The hon. Member for Manchester referred to the Educational Publishers Council and the Educational Equipment Association report and criticised the low provision for the purchase of school books and equipment. It is for the local authorities, in the first instance, to say whether the analysis in the report is sound.
But concerning the rate support grant two points can be brought out. First, the higher improvement factors will allow for an increase in real terms in the area of expenditure covering books and equipment. Secondly, since part of the case for more expenditure is the rapid rise in prices, the rate support grant system is designed to allow for price increases which authorities incur. They have claimed a price increase of about 6 per cent. in the current year for purchases under the heading of equipment


and materials, which includes books. The increase Order takes full account of that increase.
The negotiations for the figure for education expenditure are a typical example of one of the main features in the rate support grant exercise this year—the extent of the consultations between central Government and local government leading up to these Orders.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg) confirmed that the local authority programmes have been substantially met in deciding the relevant expenditure figures, and that the figures for relevant expenditure were not now in dispute between the Department and the local authorities.

Mr. Crosland: If the hon. Gentleman believes that there is no dispute over the figures, then he is certainly living in a dream world, as was the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg), whose remarks have been totally contradicted by other distinguished members of his own Association of Municipal Corporations.
The hon. Gentleman is not answering the question which I asked; he constantly quotes things going up even faster than the average of 4·2 per cent. Will the hon. Gentleman tell us what in compensation is going up significantly slower than the average rate of 4·2 per cent., apart from a few parks?

Mr. Page: Administration is a good example. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman is now arguing that there should be any restraint over local authority expenditure. He complained about the statement in the report that we had asked for restraint. Indeed, he quoted a paragraph in the report, which I thought a reasonable paragraph, in which we had merely called attention to the need for restraint in the increase in local government expenditure.
I have turned to the report which the previous Government put before the House in 1968 in support of the grant Order where the words are quoted:
Taking local authority expenditure as a whole, the Government expects that in 1969–70 local authorities as a whole will restrain the level of their expenditure.
It uses practically the same words as we have used in the report this year.
The previous Government, in paragraph 14 of their report, said:
In considering the estimates of expenditure, account has been taken of the need for developing services, of the relative priorities attaching to them and of the necessity for continuing restraint as explained in paragraph 9.
Strangely enough, to stress the point, there is a misprint and that line is repeated,
them and of the necessity for continuing restraint as explained in paragraph 9.
It is perhaps incidental that it was stressed in that way.

Mr. Crosland: I must press the Minister. As to restraint, I am objecting to the total contrast between the speeches which the hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friend were making two years and one year ago with the speeches which they are making today. However, the Minister is not answering the question which I put to him, which is not about the totals. The Minister said that expenditure on education and various other matters is increasing by more than the average rate of 4·2 per cent. If 4·2 per cent. is to be maintained, it must be paid for by other services rising substantially less than 4·2 per cent. Apart from a few parks, I want to know what those other services are.

Mr. Page: Does the right hon. Gentleman wish me to read out the full list?

Mr. Crosland: The major items.

Mr. Page: I have the list here. Among the items where there is a slightly less percentage increase this year are school meals and milk.

Mr. Crosland: Go on.

Mr. Page: I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will have patience as I look down the list. There is also a slight reduction in the figure at the moment for the police, which my right hon. Friend explained does not take account of the future increases which one contemplates there.

Mr. Crosland: Go on.

Mr. Page: The right hon. Gentleman apparently wishes me to read down a very long list of figures. I have given him one or two examples. I am quite prepared to lend him the list, if he


wishes, or to write to him about it, or to put it in the Library.

Mr. Crosland: The hon. Gentleman has had since 4 o'clock today to do this.

Mr. Page: What the right hon. Gentleman is really arguing is that there should not be any restraint at all. That was the burden of his argument when he quoted from the report. He quoted figures of percentage increases over previous years. I have done a little mathematics on this and I find that the average over the years from 1964 to 1970–71 is 4·7 per cent. This compares not unfavourably with the figures of 3·7 and 4·8 per cent. that we have chosen for the next two years.
One would think, from the tenor of the right hon. Gentleman's speech, that the Government's proposals this year are in some way a cut in the grants. In fact, we are proposing to increase both the total of Exchequer grants and the proportion which those grants bear to local authority expenditure. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Carter) also talked about a cut in the rate support grant. There is no such thing. I sincerely sympathise with him about the dangers in Longbridge Lane, but if he examines the figures for highways he will see that we have taken account of increased expenditure and that there is not a cut in any way in highways expenditure.
My hon. Friend the Member for Northants, South (Mr. Arthur Jones) pointed out that the amount of rates paid had escalated more in the last two years than at any other time. Yet the right hon. Gentleman asked us to say by how much the rates might be increased during the next year or two. I am not going to be led into any quotation or estimate or guesswork on that.

Mr. Crosland: Very wise.

Mr. Page: The right hon. Gentleman suggested that the domestic ratepayers would have to pay a great deal more. They have all benefited from the reductions of the rate poundage over the years, and the increased grants provided have been more than sufficient to cover the cost of the domestic element. Some part of it has thus accrued to the ratepayers generally. It seems to us on this occasion that the effect of the 5d. reduction

each year has been to shield the domestic ratepayer from virtually all the increases that have taken place in local authority spending. The Government do not consider it appropriate that the domestic ratepayer should be so insulated from the cost of services. While between 1966–67 and 1970–71 average disposable incomes rose by 21 per cent., the domestic rate poundage increased by only 9·3 per cent., so that accordingly we have decided that the domestic element next year should be not the traditional 5p but somewhat less.

Mr. Marks: Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that most Conservative councils have not been carrying out the expenditure which they should have carried out, and is he suggesting that they were quite wrong to give the domestic ratepayer the full benefit of this?

Mr. Page: I do not think that follows. It does not follow from what I was saying.

Mr. Kaufman: Surely the philosophy of the hon. Gentleman's party at the General Election, a philosophy which had great appeal for obvious reasons, was that indirect regressive taxes should be cut back, because these were a burden on the cost of living. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) has made absolutely clear, one of the most important regressive taxes is the domestic rate. What the hon. Gentleman seems to be telling the House is that the Government have decided, as a deliberate matter of policy, to increase a regressive tax so that those with large incomes can get benefits from the reduction of direct taxes.

Mr. Page: I will not be led further into that rather philosophical dissertation. I want to deal with some questions raised previously.
My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Rost) asked for assurances about steps being taken for efficiency by local authorities. Many local authorities have employed consultants and have taken steps to make their operations more efficient.
I return to the remarks of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Aston (Mr. Julius Silverman), and the hon. Lady the Member for Ladywood about, as the hon. Lady put it, penny-pinching, and, as the hon. Gentleman put it, about cutting minor useful services. That is not


the intention and it should not be read into paragraph 22 of the report. It is the hope that all local authorities will take the example of some of the better local authorities in using management services to improve their efficiency, I doubt whether any local authority, even though it has used management services to improve efficiency, can put its hand on its heart and say that there can be no more savings.
The hon. Member for Aston raised an interesting point when he spoke about the increase in wages and how the Exchequer received a certain amount back in income tax. When the right hon. Member for Grimsby said that he was glad that the Order provided for the payment of grant on the whole of the amount of the manual workers' pay increase, I should have mentioned that although the Government, through grants, will bear 57·5 per cent. of the cost, that part of the costs falling on the rates will place about a 3d. rate on the ratepayers—a significant burden.
Decisions by local authorities on the pay of local authority employees will be reflected in the rate bills, and these increases have nothing to do with Government decisions on the rate support grants.
The hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) said that the whole of the Order was inflationary. But there is a growth in expenditure, and it has to be paid either by the taxpayer or by the ratepayer. It is not necessarily more inflationary if one charges it to the ratepayer rather than the taxpayer. There is proper argument as to who should pay, but the hon. Gentleman's inflation argument does not stand up to examination.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Surely the hon. Gentleman will agree that the rate increase coupled with the proposed rent increase is bound to lead to further wage demands.

Mr. Page: It will result in a rent decrease for many in the system that my right hon. Friend has put forward. Let me give the hon. Gentleman one figure. If the grant in 1971–72 was 58 per cent. instead of 57½ per cent., the extra grant would be £18 million. If applied to the relief of rates generally, it would reduce them by less than 2d.
The hon. Gentleman also asked for an assurance that there would be no delay in introducing an increase Order. His Government skipped a whole year in bringing in such an Order. We have no intention of failing to bring in an increase Order in the proper time if the circumstances warrant it, as set out in paragraph 7 of the report which the hon. Gentleman quoted.
The hon. Member for Aberdare (Mr. Probert) asked about derelict land. He was mistaken on one or two points. This receives specific grant which is paid in respect of actual expenditure, and there is nothing in this Order which restricts the amount of the specific grant payable. An estimate of the amount of revenue grants payable is made and it is deducted from the Exchequer grant as part of the process of calculating the rate support grant. Most derelict land grants are capital grants. The Government are not cutting back the progress in reclaiming derelict land. In fact the reclamation programme is increasing, and we wish to ensure that it continues to increase.

Mr. Probert: The hon. Gentleman missed the whole point, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) in his intervention. Paragraph 12 of Circular 2/70 says:
All capital payments made during the year on locally determined schemes (including any part financed from Government grants) will count against the allocation, except in so far as they are financed
by matters which do not concern us now. The local authorities which come under county councils will have their allocation for the year increased by the inclusion of a capital grant and, therefore, will be prevented from going ahead with their schemes.

Mr. Page: I will study what the hon. Gentleman has said and see whether there is any way in which I can explain the position further to him.
The hon. Member for Dudley (Dr. Gilbert) spoke about the disabled. I agree that this expenditure is likely to increase very substantially. In fact, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services made special provision referred to in paragraph 14 of the report for the specific purpose of the mentally handicapped and the other categories mentioned there.
Towards the end of his speech, the right hon. Member for Grimsby said that rates are a horrible tax. My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Fry), the hon. Member for Swindon (Mr. David Stoddart), and my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South-East all referred to rating reform. I go along with the right hon. Gentleman when he said that we ought to search for new sources of local government revenue. As soon as possible, the Government will be putting before the House a Green Paper for the discussion of possible new forms of revenue for local authorities. But I cannot see at the moment anything to take the place of these, and, therefore, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that we must concentrate on making rates more equitable. It may be that one would like to switch from rental values to capital values or to a contribution from the earning non-householder. We will discuss those possibilities over the next few months, and I think that we shall have some interesting and constructive debates.
For the moment, we are dealing merely with the rate support grant Order for the next two years. I ask the House to accept it.

Question put and agreed to

Resolved,
That the Rate Support Grant Order, 1970, dated 20th November, 1970, a copy of which was laid before this House on 26th November, be approved.

Resolved,
That the Rate Support Grant (Increase) Order, 1970, dated 20th November, 1970, a copy of which was laid before this House on 26th November, be approved.—[Mr. Peter Walker.]

SUNDAY CINEMATOGRAPH ENTERTAINMENTS

Resolved,
That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, extending section 1 of the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932 to the Rural District of Barrow-upon-Soar, a copy of which was laid before this House on 17th November, be approved.—[Mr. Sharples.]

Resolved,
That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, extending section 1 of the Sunday Entertainments Act,

1932 to the Rural District of Market Bosworth, a copy of which was laid before this House on 17th November, be approved.—[Mr. Sharples.]

TRAFFIC WARDENS (FUNCTIONS)

Resolved,
That the Functions of Traffic Wardens Order, 1970, a draft of which was laid before this House on 12th November, be approved.—[Mr. Sharples.]

LONDON TRANSPORT EMPLOYEES (PENSIONS AND COMPENSATION)

10.11 p.m.

The Minister for Local Government and Development (Mr. Graham Page): I beg to move,
That the London Transport (Compensation to Employees) Regulations 1970, a draft of which was laid before this House on 24th November, be approved.
We cannot skip over this Motion quite so quickly as we did the others. These Regulations went before the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments on 1st December, and that Committee was particularly interested in them because they seek to be retrospective to 22nd October, a provision which is authorised by Section 37(3) of the Transport (London) Act, 1969.
The House may be surprised to be called upon to consider Regulations relating to London Transport when, just over 12 months ago, the whole undertaking was handed over to the Greater London Council. Strictly, I should say that it was handed over to the London Transport Executive or, even more accurately, mainly to the London Transport Executive, a small part to British Railways, and another small part to the National Bus Company.
The House has to consider these Regulations because Section 37 of the Transport (London) Act. 1969, required the Minister as he was, now the Secretary of State for the Environment, to make Regulations providing for the payment of compensation to those who have suffered loss by the transfer of a transport undertaking to the London Transport Executive. The persons are described in Regulation 3.
They are entitled to compensation upon the relevant event, which is set out in Schedule 1. This, in short, means that when their employer changes from the London Transport Board to the London Transport Executive, or to the National Bus Company or to a subsidiary of the National Bus Company, they are entitled to compensation if they lose by that transfer.
The sort of compensation to which they are entitled is set out first in Part III, the resettlement compensation. If anyone who has been in employment with the London Transport Executive for three years loses by the changeover, he can claim resettlement compensation. Under Part IV an employee can claim long-term compensation for loss of employment, or loss or diminution of emoluments, or worsening of position. Under Part V an employee can claim retirement compensation or his widow or dependents can claim payment in the event of his death.
I should be happy to go through the Regulations in great detail and say exactly what the employee is entitled to, but I should point out that they follow the usual form which is already well known to the House. The British Transport Regulations were the same kind of Regulations.
I am sure that by the Regulations we have provided full compensation for anyone who suffers loss by reason of the change from the London Transport Board to the London Transport Executive. In order to make certain that nothing is lost by the fact that they have not been

brought before the House for about 12 months after the change took place, the Regulations are retrospective for 12 months.

Dr. Alan Glyn: My hon. Friend has said that the Regulations are retrospective. Did I understand him correctly to mean, in his last words, that the only reason for making them retrospective was that this was the first opportunity that Parliament had of bringing them into force, and that we are not making a precedent of retrospective legislation?

Mr. Page: Normally these compensation Regulations come in rather a long time after the event, because consultations take place between all those who are interested, and their organisations. I can assure the House that on this occasion there has been full consultation with the organisations of employees and employers, and that full agreement has been reached on the terms of the Regulations.

10.17 p.m.

Mr. Tom Bradley: In elaboration of the point made by the Minister, I should declare an interest. I have the honour to be the president of the trade union that negotiated these terms. We are very happy and satisfied with them, and it would ill become me to oppose the Regulations in this place. Therefore, I very much hope that the House will approve the Order.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the London Transport (Compensation to Employees) Regulations 1970, a draft of which was laid before this House on 24th November, be approved.

INVALID VEHICLE (MR. PAUL BATES)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Clegg.]

10.17 p.m.

Mr. Peter Hordern: I wish to talk about my constituent, Mr. Paul Bates, and, in particular, about the strength of his case for a vehicle suitable to his condition. Paul Bates is a well-known Horsham figure. His courage and determination to lead a normal life have long been a source of inspiration to his many friends and to all those who have come across him—and especially to those who are disabled.
Paul Bates is a respiratory tetraplegic. He was struck down while on active service in the Armed Forces in Malaysia in the 1950s, and is effectively immobilised. He is, therefore, classified as a war disabled pensioner, and there is no dispute about this classification.
For many years war disablement pensioners who qualify by reason of the severity of their disablement have had the benefit of the use of the Minister's discretion, exercised under successive Royal Warrants since 1946, of providing them with a vehicle. This vehicle has usually taken the form either of a saloon or an estate vehicle in which these pensioners can be driven. It is accepted that there is no absolute right to these vehicles but, equally, there is no known case in which any such pensioner who was qualified has not had a vehicle if he wanted one. This was confirmed by Mr. Kenneth Robinson when he was Minister of Health in a statement to the House on 15th February, 1967.
This service has been a humane and generous action for those who have become severely disabled on active service for their country. What is more, the generosity does not stop simply at the provision of a car. Free road fund licences are issued, and insurance is also provided free. Further, an allowance is given towards the running costs of the car, and I understand that this amounts to between £50 and £100 a year. The vehicle itself is regularly replaced after a period of about five years. The Minis-

try will even adapt the car to reasonable modifications.
There is no dispute about the extent and generosity of the service that is provided. It is one of which the country can justly be proud. Where disabled pensioners have lost the use of both legs, they rightly deserve, and are getting, the best treatment the country can give.
My constituent, Paul Bates, has been offered one of these vehicles. Unfortunately, he is too disabled to be able to get into it. For this reason, and seemingly for this reason alone, he has been refused an alternative vehicle. It is true that he has been offered a grant, amounting to £120 a year, towards the running costs of a suitable vehicle, but that in no way approaches the extent of the benefits provided to those who are less severely disabled.
I repeat what these benefits are: a vehicle costing about £1,000 replaceable every five years or so; a free road fund licence; free insurance; and a running allowance of at least £50 a year. Against this, Mr. Bates has been offered a flat allowance of £120, and, of course, he is expected to provide his own car. This is an obvious anomaly and one which simply cannot be tolerated.
There would seem to be two courses open to the Minister. One is to provide a grant which would be comparable in money terms to that now given to these particular war pensioners who qualify, and the other is to provide a vehicle of comparable cost with the same services as are being offered. I recognise, of course, that these vehicles are not provided as of right. But it is a fact that they are provided to those who have lost the use of both legs. It is extraordinary to say the least, that they should not be provided to those who are even more disabled than those to whom they are provided.
What sort of proposition can it be that a certain service is given to those who are badly disabled but is not given at all to those who are even worse disabled? I cannot believe that there are many in this category. This small band of war disabled pensioners—I emphasise the word "war"—are so badly disabled that they cannot use a Ministry vehicle. Perhaps the Minister will tell me how many


of them there are and what cost would be involved in paying them a grant instead of providing them with this service.
However, this is not the only alternative. The other is to provide another kind of vehicle. I understand that this has recently been done with a Triumph Herald, fitted with a special door. My constituent wants something like a Commer 2000 van or another vehicle which would be comparable in cost to the cars which the Ministry now provide.
The remarkable thing about this case is that Mr. Bates has never been asked what sort of vehicle he would like, or whether the vehicle he would like is in any way comparable in cost. When one considers that the whole service is discretionary anyway, it is odd that his request should simply have been refused without a further inquiry.
I hope that the Minister will not rely on the argument which was used by his predecessor, Dr. Dunwoody, the then Parliamentary Secretary. Dr. Dunwoody wrote to me on 18th May last as follows:
One difficulty about changing the arrangements in this way is that it cannot be viewed in isolation from the needs of National Health Service patients. If more money is to be injected into the invalid vehicle service it is essential that priority be given to those groups with the best claims whether they be war pensioners or National Health Service patients.
I am sure that my hon. Friend would never he guilty of talking that kind of nonsense because the fact is that Mr. Bates has a much stronger case than all those who now receive these benefits.
I want to refer to an extract from another letter which has come into my hands. It was written last February by the then Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Department of Health and Social Security. I ask my hon. Friend to rely on this letter rather than on the letter I have just quoted. The final paragraph in reply to a civilian body which sought parity with war pensioners reads:
One final point I would like to make is that of the difference in treatment, so far as the vehicle service is concerned, between the war pensioner and the National Health Service applicant. The statutory powers for the provision of cars for war pensioners stem from successive Royal Warrants and the aim has always been to acknowledge the self-sacrifice of the war pensioner in defence of his country as well as to restore his mobility. This is in accordance with the well established principles

in other fields and, I am sure, continues to command general support.
I trust and hope—indeed, I am confident—that my hon. Friend will carry out the spirit of that undertaking. I am sure that he will agree that Mr. Bates has a very good case and that it would be wrong that the present very generous system should be brought into disrepute because of what looks like an administrative oversight.
The point is very simple. How can it be justified either in equity or logic that a service can be provided to a category of disabled war pensioners but not at all to war pensioners who are even more severely disabled? How can it be right to select a service to apply to one small band of war-disabled pensioners but not to those who are even more disabled than those to whom it has been provided?

10.27 p.m.

Mr. Lewis Carter-Jones: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Hordern) for giving one or two of us a chance to comment on this case. Paul Bates is well known to those of us on both sides of the House who have an interest in the disabled. This is a nonpolitical matter, and I appeal to the Under-Secretary of State to tell his civil servants, who are often very understanding, that in this case they look like making themselves appear rather foolish.
This is the case of a man who contracted polio in Malaya. He is 6 ft. 4 in. in height, but basically he has to lie in a horizontal position and use a respirator. If he were not so disabled the Department would provide him with a car, because his case would not then present a problem. As it is, Paul Bates presents a problem. I say to the hon. Gentleman "Solve it. Be flexible. Be useful. Be understanding. Be compassionate".
The guy is only asking for a van. It will not cost any more. I must say that I let the Department off the hook in this matter, but I accuse the Treasury of always talking about value analysis. I keep saying, whether I am dealing with a Conservative or a Labour Government: "If you deal properly with this case you will find that in the long run the money will be very well spent and you will, in fact, save a considerable amount".
We are talking about a man with a severe disability who, in a state of paralysis and from a horizontal position, is


making his contribution to our economy by exporting beds all over the world. If he had gone into a home and had not made this effort the State would over 15 years have paid out £75,000.
We are asking for a vehicle for Mr. Bates which costs less than the one which the Department is normally prepared to provide. I ask the hon. Gentleman to use his influence. Let him get hold of the very good men he has in the Department and insist that they show common sense and provide the vehicle which is, after all, this man's right.

10.30 p.m.

Mr. Neil Marten: As this may well be the last small debate for some time on disabled drivers in the broader sense, I think it appropriate for me, as chairman of the all-party Disabled Drivers Group, to pay a tribute to Mr. Speaker, who has told us today that he is soon to leave. Mr. Speaker has for a long time been Vice-President of the Disabled Drivers Association, and I know how extremely interested he is in these matters and how much he has done to help with disabled drivers' problems. I am sure that the whole House wishes to acknowledge his support for that cause.
The case of Paul Bates is an extreme example of a rigid attitude maintained all along the line, whether in the Treasury or in the Department of Health and Social Security I do not know. That line simply must be broken. Mr. Bates wants a van. Why should he not have a van?
It comes back to a question of flexibility, as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones) said. I know that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State has a flexible mind. He has told me that he is going deeply into the whole question. Yesterday we had an all-party meeting with all the various disabled drivers' associations upstairs in a Committee Room. When I threw the meeting open to the guests, the disabled drivers, the very first point which was raised came from a Miss Felicity Lane Fox, who had been one of my constituents but who now lives in London. She said that she had had a vehicle and help from the Ministry. She had suffered polio. Then her paralysis became too bad and she was unable

to drive any longer, and from that moment onwards she got no help at all.
We come back to what we have been campaigning about for so long, the need to recognise the disabled passenger, the person so disabled that he or she cannot drive himself or herself.
I know that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary is a sincere man. He is going into this matter, and he wants time, but I hope that by, let us say, early or late spring next year he will be able to announce to the House some radical reappraisal of the whole problem of help to disabled drivers. He has the political will. It will be done. He can do it. It is up to him.

10.32 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Michael Alison): I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Hordern) will excuse me if I gallop along rather, because I want to cover as much ground as possible in the time remaining to me.
No one who has listened to my hon. Friend speak about the severe disabilities suffered by Mr. Paul Bates, his struggles to come to terms with them, and his eventual triumph over adversity—as the hon. Member for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones) pointed out—could fail to be emotionally and personally involved in the case. I add my tribute to this brave young man, and I assure the House that all the officers of the Department of Health and Social Security who have come into contact with Mr. Bates—and there are many of them—have nothing but the greatest admiration for his spirit and sense of determination, which, I may add, has brought him to the very considerable position of, as it were, viability which he enjoys today.
As my hon. Friend explained, Mr. Bates sustained his disability while serving in the Forces in Malaya. He is a disabled war pensioner and as such is eligible for, and receives, help from my Department with his personal transport.
Under existing arrangements, we provide small cars for eligible disabled war pensioners. At present just over 6,500 such cars are being used by war pensioners in Great Britain; that is to say, by war pensioners who have a certain degree of mobility, and disablement of


20 per cent. or more, and who are able to enter and leave one of these small cars without difficulty. I should add that the cost of these cars is only about half the figure of £1,000 suggested by my hon. Friend. No Triumph Herald, incidentally, has been supplied by my Department, though it may have been supplied by some other Department.
There are other war pensioners eligible for help with personal transport who prefer to use their own cars rather than have one of the Department's small cars, and there are still others who are eligible for help but who are unable to enter and leave a car within our range. Both these groups provide their own vehicle, the first from choice and the second of necessity, and we pay them an annual allowance towards the maintenance of their own vehicle.
Mr. Bates comes within the second group, and we have for a number of years paid him a maintenance allowance for his specially-adapted, privately-owned van. There are about 150 war pensioners in a similar situation, namely, who cannot use our vehicles but get a maintenance allowance. Most of them are not so severely disabled as Mr. Bates, it is true, but all are in the same position of being unable to use our small cars and, therefore, having to provide—and replace as necessary—their own vehicle in respect of which they are paid an allowance from my Department.
There are, in addition, some 25 or so war pensioners about as severely disabled as Mr. Bates who at the moment do not seek any help from the vehicle service. Had they purchased a special vehicle, they, likewise, would be eligible for our allowance, and, no doubt if a special type of vehicle in which they could be accommodated were to be provided by the Department or a grant of equivalent value had been payable as suggested they would apply for one or the other.
It has been asked why we do not extend the range of vehicles we provide for war pensioners so that all those eligible for help may have their vehicle supplied by the Department. The answer to this is that money for the vehicle service is not unlimited and we must use what we have to the best advantage. If we were to extend the range to provide

not only the larger cars which would satisfy the needs of some of the pensioners who at present have to buy their own but also to include special vans, Dormobiles and ambulance type vehicles which the most severely disabled would need, the cost for war pensioners alone would be perhaps an additional £20,000 a year.
In itself, this is not a very large sum of money, but it would be wrong, in my opinion, to limit this extension, if we made it to war pensioners. Although the disabled war pensioner still rightly enjoys a measure of preference in the help he receives with personal transport over his equally disabled National Health Service counterpart, I feel sure that the general feeling is that the amount of preference is just about right and that it would be wrong to upset the present balance.
I ask hon. Members to bear in mind that this is an area of delicate sensitivity. Nobody has any doubt that the war pensioner whose injury was sustained in the pursuit of active service, such as Paul Bates in Malaya in the emergency, is in one category, but there are patients in the National Health Service who feel that a young man of 18 who today loses a big toe when on a short service engagement in the Forces and who becomes a war pensioner, because of the paradox that technically the war is not over, is in a different category. Consequently, there are people who become classified as war pensioners, with all the special advantages of that, who have been rather remote from the hazards and personal suffering of active service.
All I am saying at this point is that this is the nexus of the relationship between the privilege granted to war pensioners and Health Service patients and one must be careful to preserve a balance which is acceptable to public opinion.
Any improvement in the present war pensioner scheme would need to be accompanied by similar concessions for the Health Service patients, of whom there are many more thousands. It should be remembered that the Health Service patient who is unable to use the type of vehicle which we provide does not at the present time have the war pensioner's alternative of an allowance towards the maintenance of his privately-owned vehicle. He is precluded from receiving


any help from the Department, and it is, therefore, for consideration whether, if extra money could be found for the vehicle service, it would be proper to give more to those who already receive help rather than to those who at present receive no help at all. The same objections apply to giving a grant equivalent to the cost of supplying a vehicle.

Mr. Carter-Jones: What I ask is: why not supply a van, which would be much better than the car we provide?

Mr. Alison: I will come to that.
I make the point to my hon. Friend, who rightly points out the fantastic anomaly, that there is a whole band of National Health Service patients, thousands of them, more severely disabled than those who qualify for vehicles. We face this frankly, and our logical justification for this is that the National Health Service three-wheeler is in our view basically a kind of artificial limb. It really is applicable only to those who have this special limited limb disability. It is an extension of an artificial limb, and those who have not got this limb disability do not qualify for it. It is the only way we can justify the fact that there are thousands of people extremely disabled, more so than those who have a vehicle, who are automatically debarred.
For this reason we have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we cannot accept the suggestions made by my hon. Friend. We could not in fairness provide something for Mr. Bates without being prepared to make a similar provision for a very large number of other war pensioners and patients.
Mr. Bates' own van is almost worn out and he would like us to buy him another. He contends that to buy and modify a van which could accommodate him in his special bed and the other special equipment which he needs to carry with him would cost no more than one of the cars we can provide; but this is not so. A suitable vehicle for Mr. Bates would cost at least twice that of one of our cars.
Although we have made no detailed investigation recently of Mr. Bates' precise vehicle needs, we are well aware of his disabilities and what he will require in the way of a vehicle.
Hon. Members, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten), will recall an Adjournment debate we had two weeks ago today. There were very determined suggestions that we should give cars instead of three-wheelers to haemophiliac users, that we should give some sort of outdoor vehicle to quadriplegics who get no help at all, that we should help what was termed the disabled passenger and that we should give cars to disabled mothers with young children.
I mention all these potential improvements to stress that there is no lack of suggestions for bettering the invalid vehicle service. Some want those that are already helped to get improved help; others want those that get no help to be given some. The common theme is that all the suggestions would cost more and would create fresh base lines from which campaigns for still more concessions would be launched.
We are urgently reviewing the invalid vehicle service. I assure my hon. Friend with all the sincerity I can command that there is a problem here with all the anomalies and paradoxes, and we want to see whether we can deal with it within the review. I am sure it would be quite wrong to make piecemeal changes, including increasing the financial assistance to those who run their own vehicle.
I do not want it to be thought that the Department is seeking to discriminate against this gravely disabled young man. Let me say that while we feel we cannot in fairness to others give Mr. Bates more help under the vehicle service at this stage, there is certainly no lack of help forthcoming from the Department in other ways. Indeed, Mr. Bates receives from the Department a very large cash sum free of income tax, in the way of war disability pension, additional comforts allowance, constant attendance allowance, special allowance to pay for him to be cared for in his own home rather than in hospital, and maintenance allowance for his van.
In addition, he is provided with respirators, suction apparatus, special bed and mattresses, a hoist and many items of medical and home nursing equipment. All these are supplied, maintained and replaced as necessary, and we maintain the electronic equipment which enables him to use the telephone and to type.
I know my hon. Friend is concerned here with principles and it is to these I have addressed myself. Although it is not relevant as a point of principle, nevertheless as a matter of fact my hon. Friend will to glad to know that considerable financial help towards the cost of a new vehicle has been offered Mr. Bates from non-statutory resources. If Mr. Bates accepts this help and buys a new van, we will continue to pay, in addition to all these other sums, an annual maintenance allowance for his vehicle.

10.45 p.m.

Mr. Alfred Morris: This is a very important case. The hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Hordern) brought a compelling case for reconsideration by the Department of the problem facing Mr. Paul Bates. The Minister has reminded us of the recent debate on the problems of haemophiliacs. I am very glad that he recalled that debate and the part played by the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten).
The Prime Minister, at a recent confrontation with the Haemophilia Society in Bexley, said that he understood that the society wanted action on the question of replacing the three-wheel vehicle with a four-wheel vehicle. I know of the hon. Gentleman's interest in the problems of disabled people who require help with transport, and I am very pleased to

learn that there is now proceeding a review of the whole question of the supply of vehicles for the disabled. I can see no reason why we should have the old division between the war-disabled and the peacetime-disabled. It is utterly wrong that there are people who are more disabled than others whose transport requirements are met much less satisfactorily than they should be. I hope very much that this year and next year will see further steps forward in improving the mobility of disabled people.

Mr. William Molloy: The hon. Gentleman mentioned the cost of the aid to Mr. Bates, but if Mr. Bates were in hospital the cost would inevitably be more, and this could apply to thousands of others. By helping them with vehicles we are helping ourselves economically as well as raising their status as individuals.

Mr. Morris: I hope that the hon. Gentleman is looking into the whole question of cost-effectiveness. There are many disabled people who—
The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
Adjourned at thirteen minutes to Eleven o'clock.